


It takes heaven and hell to raise the Antichrist

by dont_stop_imagine_mccartneys_celery



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Children, Domestic Fluff, Fanart, Fluff and Humor, Kid Fic, LGBTQ Character, Living Together, M/M, Other, Parenthood, Romantic Comedy, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 103,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dont_stop_imagine_mccartneys_celery/pseuds/dont_stop_imagine_mccartneys_celery
Summary: If Good Omens was a Rom Com Sitcom!In which Crowley stays just a little longer at the hospital of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl and witnesses how the nuns misplace the Antichrist. He decides that he will take matters into his own hands and runs off again with the Antichrist, that is believed to be the exchanged baby of the American Cultural Attaché's wife.In lack of a better idea he brings the baby to his archenemy and dear friend Aziraphale and they agree they have no other choice than to raise the son of Satan themselves. That way they have the chance to let him grow up well-balanced between heaven and hell. Surprisingly, (for them, but really not the readers) the little extension of their family lets them only grow closer.Updates every Friday or Saturday!(Fanart in Chapter 8)





	1. Prelude to the tragedy we call the Armageddon‘t: Part 1

“Ohshitohshitohshit. Why now? Why me?”, Crowley asked himself once again as he was on his way to the hospital to deliver the son of his boss. The Boss. Satan.  
Sighing deeply Crowley let his face sink on the stirring wheel of his Bentley, while in the background a Best of Queens album played quiet enough not to wake the sleeping Antichrist in the basket on the seat next to him.

“YOU KNOW WHY”, the voice of Freddie Mercury startled him. Crowley’s head shot up just in time to drive around the pedestrian that was crossing the road at the red traffic light before him.

“Of course!”, he reassured hastily. “It was just a rhetoric question! Of course, I know why me. I, I”

“YOU’VE SPEND MORE TIME ON EARTH THAN ANY OTHER DEMON AND I ORDER YOU TO SUCCESS IN THIS.”

“Of course,”, muttered Crowley again and thought to himself, I order you, I order you, of course he would say it like that! Demons don’t trust each other, Satan beware! He knew as well as Hastur and Ligur had known that if he fucked this up Satan would lose the trust in him, that he never even had in the first place and Crowley would wander straight to… well not hell, but to a place far worse.

He arrived at the hospital – how could it have been any else – right on time. The nuns of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl already awaited him. There had also been a man standing outside of the hospital and having a smoke, but Crowley hadn’t paid him much attention until he heard of the babies. Babies, as in plural.

Of course, he knew that there had to be at least two babies involved. It should go down just like one of those clever tricks with three cups which are very hard to follow just like the little movement with which one of the little somethings under the cups would at one point disappear into the sleeve of the magician. Against common believe it was just as easy with human babies.

Mrs. Deirdre Young is giving birth in Delivery Room Three. She is having a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby A.

The wife of the American Cultural Attaché, Mrs. Harriet Dowling, is giving birth in Delivery Room Four. She is having a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby B.

Sister Mary Loquacious is currently handed a golden-haired male baby called the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness.

“Is that him?”, said Sister Mary, staring at the baby Crowley had just handed her. He vaguely nodded as the nun began to play with the toes of the child. She hadn’t bothered to keep it in the basket holding it in her arms as another nun approached and told her to look for some father that was wondering around. They started some sort of discussion about fathers that were in the way, woozy mothers and the exchange that, whenever it was mentioned, let the voices of the nuns turn to hushed whispers. Crowley was looking for his exit.

“Just go you look after the mother, I will see to the father”, said the second nun and was off again.

“Really”, Sister Mary huffed. „What about the exchange now? You will come and help me, Master Crowley."

“Wait what? No, I really must go now”, Crowley glanced down at his naked wrist and tried to flee as the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness was placed in his arms. He looked startled and wanted to protest, but Sister Mary had already entered a room with the number Three on it. Hastily he followed her.

Inside the room a woman was sleeping in a bed. Baby A was asleep beside her, weighed and nametagged. Sister Mary, who was raised with the believe that if you wanted something to be done right, you ought to do it yourself, removed the nametag, copied it out, and attached the duplicate to a second crib standing next to the one with baby A. Finally, she took the baby from Crowley’s arms and placed it in the crib. The baby looked similar, both being small, blotchy, and looking sort of, though not really, like Winston Churchill.

“Aren’t they both real cutie tootsies?”, Sister Mary cooed.

“I really have to go now”, said Crowley and was already on the way out of the room.  
There was a knock at the door. He opened it. Behind the door stood the man from outside of the hospital.

“Has it happened yet?”, asked Mr. Young. “I’m the father. The husband. Whatever. Both.”

Crowley’s brow furrowed as he had the exact same thought as Sister Mary. He hadn’t expected the American Cultural Attaché to look like this man in his cardigan. He looked rather un-American. Sister Mary swallowed her disappointment.

“Oooh, yes”, she said. “Congratulations. Your lady is still asleep- Master Crowley, you are already leaving?”, she interrupted herself as Crowley made his way past the man in the door.

“I am afraid, yes. I still got something to do”, he said and left the room. Although, before he could leave the hospital he ran into another nun. Bloody satanic hospital.

“Where is Sister Mary?”, the nun asked him.

“Room Three.”

“Room Three? What would she do there? I told her to bring the baby to Room Four.”

“Room Four?”

“Where the wife of the American Cultural Attaché lies.”

“Ah”, Crowley said and went on with his way. With his hands in his pockets he rushed past some more nuns, before his steps got slower and he stopped right in front of the elevator.  
“They bloody misplaced the Antichrist with the wrong baby”, he blessed. He turned around. “I have to do everything myself”, he muttered.

While he ran back to Room Three, the nun had already reached the room, exchanged some blinking with Sister Mary and after they found that blinking was not really a reassuring way of telling one another about complicated details in a monumental part to an act that would change the world, thus they left the room together to have some words about it and then decided that another exchange would have to happen. They called the father out to show him the restroom with the coffee machine.

While all this happened the other nuns already prepared Baby B to be swapped with the Antichrist under the noses of the Attachés wife and the Secret Service men, by the cunning expedient of wheeling one baby away (‘to be weighed, love, got to do that, it’s the law’) and being slightly in panic as they realize the Antichrist is not yet there for the exchange.

Crowley reached Room Three and found it empty not counting the sleeping mother and babies. He looked the two cribs over and decided not all too sure that they were still swapped. With fast fingers he changed took both nametags out of the cribs and changed them out so they were right again. The door was opened. Startled he turned around hoping he wasn’t found out by some witnesses. It was the nuns. Crowley didn’t exhale but kept his composure.

“There he is”, one of the nuns said upon seeing the Antichrist. Crowley stood aside and let her take the Antichrist, as Sister Mary entered the room again and whisper shouted not to wake the sleeping mother:

“Wait! It is not the right baby!”

The nun with the baby looked surprised. Crowley wanted to say something, but Sister Mary rushed up to the other nun, took the Antichrist from her arms and put it once again in Crowley’s arms. Now he was surprised, too.

“We already exchanged the baby, but the wrong ones! This is the right baby!”, Sister Mary pointed to Baby A.  
The other nuns looked first at the baby, then angrily at Sister Mary.

“This could have been a big mistake, Sister Mary.”

Then faster than Crowley could look they replaced Baby A in his crib with Baby B and rushed with Baby A out of the room again to bring it back to the room of the Attachés wife. Again, Crowley was alone with two sleeping babies and one sleeping mother, but not mother of one of the children in the room. He stared down at the baby in his arms and a thought crossed his mind. He placed it in the second crib and wheeled it out of the room.

Outside was standing the man with the ugly cardigan.

“Can I go back inside?”, he asked unsure.

“Sure”, Crowley shrugged and proceeded to look for where he had left the basket in which he had received the child. He found the basket in the restroom next to the water cooker, where Sister Mary stood and brewed some tea.

“What baby is this?”, she asked as she noticed Crowley entering the room.

“The spare one. You don’t have any specific use for it, do you? I will just take it with me and place it on some doorstep or whatever I can find. It makes me no inconveniences.”

“Oh right. I suppose we have no use for it now that the exchange was a success.” She winked at him. Crowley stared blankly at her from behind his dark sunglasses and took the basket from the counter.

“I will be off then”, and as nonchalant as he could he placed the Antichrist again in his basket and carried him out of the hospital to his car, where he put the basket on the passenger seat and started the car. With a face out of stone he drove out of the parking lot and returned to the street. His mind still dwelled on the two babies that were now part of the exchange without any reason or purpose. He thought of a funny sitcom about two youngsters that found out they were misplaced at birth and grew up in the wrong family, because of some unorganized satanic order that lost the Antichrist.

Twice in a row.

Crowley comforted himself by thinking that the Antichrist was probably better of far away from those people anyway. If he would have stayed there any longer, he would probably already have gotten lost for a third time.


	2. Prelude to the tragedy we call the Armageddon‘t: Part 2

Aziraphale was just about to open his bookstore again after he had closed it for lunch time, as he heard the Bentley parking on the street and sadly had to make excuses to hold the store closed a little longer.

“What a bad timing you have”, he chided the demon as he opened the door to let him in. „I was just about to open the shop again. Must you disturb me at business hours.”

“I don’t care about business hours and you shouldn’t either”, Crowley huffed as he got out of the car.  
Whatever eloquent reply Aziraphale had prepared died on his tongue as he noticed the complete tizzy the demon seemed to be in.

“Did you happen to get into a car crash?”, he asked although, he would think the demon would be rather happy about something like that.

Crowley rounded the car, but instead of approaching Aziraphale he first stopped at door to the passenger seat, opened it and pulled some sort of basket out of it.

“I wish”, he mumbled and pushed his messed-up hair back over his head. He closed the car door and walked up to the angel in front of the dusty and unwelcoming bookstore carrying the basket in his right hand. As soon as the angel was able to see the content of the basket he gasped loudly and called on the demon in a way too incredulous manner:

“Crowley!”

“Yes, Aziraphale?”

“What is that?”

“A baby.”

“I can see that, but where did you get it?”

„Well, I kind of got it from some demon colleagues to bring it to some hospital, but then I changed my mind and brought it here.”

Aziraphale gaped at him.

“Why?”, he asked then more like the cry of a seagull, that just couldn’t comprehend how someone could be as stupid as the demon before him. Crowley shrugged.

“Your place was on my way to my flat so I thought I should stop by and ask if you would happen to know anything about childcare.”

“No, no, no! I meant, why did you take the- wait, what do you mean childcare? You don’t plan on keeping it, do you?”  
As Crowley didn’t do anything to protest, Aziraphale breathed: “You must be out of your mind.”

Then before either of them knew what would happen next, Aziraphale’s hand shot forward, took the crib from Crowley, who was too astonished to do anything against it and without further words the angel disappeared with the baby in his store and shut the door behind him. Crowley blinked behind the shades of his black sunglasses.

“Must be some sort of reflex”, he then wondered in memory of how he had done just the same, when he thought the child to be in bad care. He shrugged, turned to his car and thought about what should be done next. 

 

-//-

 

First, Aziraphale made himself and the baby some tea. While he was fully aware that tea was not part the types of food a human of this early age should drink, he also knew about the calming effect a good cup of hot tea could have. He sat down at the table in his kitchenette and placed the crib on the second chair.  
The baby was awake.  
Aziraphale slightly panicked and wished he would have just let Crowley take it and do... with it, whatever… demons did… with… freshly born human babies… Actually, he wasn’t really sure what demons did with babies. He didn’t think they offered them to Satan in occult traditions, that was just something for humans…

Like on clue he brought his mind back to the child before him, that just kind of lay there… staring back at him with light blue eyes, then transforming its soft features into the wide mouth and ugly face of a toad, while falling into an extremely loud and not ending scream of terror. Aziraphale dropped his tea in his attempt to calm the child by jumping up and towering over it while repeatedly saying in a very stressed voice:

“Everything is fine, all is fine, all is good, everything is fine, please don’t cry!”

The baby didn’t seem to understand.

It took some time for the distressed angel to find the milk in his fridge, put it into a glass, taking the baby into his arms and holding the glass rather confused in front of its face, before he just let appear the appropriate lid for the glass for the baby to suckle on. After a second thought he also let the milk turn a little bit warmer as it just came from the fridge, then proceeded to feed the Antichrist.

It was just when he got to stop the child from crying by rocking it in his arms, then tucking it back in its basket and continuing to be swaying the basket as the baby finally fell asleep. Now happily sleeping the child looked again less like a toad and more like some sort of rosebud formed out of marzipan. Little curls of blond hair covered its rosy head and one small hand was placed on its stomach while the other hand reached a little bit into the air, as if it was trying to grab Aziraphale. Hastily the angel reached out with his hand, but the moment his hand touched the tiny fingers, the doorbell rang.

Aziraphale shot up from his seat, looked at the baby that was still asleep and then went to see what fool was trying to enter a clearly closed book store.

As Aziraphale realized it was Crowley, he changed his mind, because he didn’t think Crowley a fool and called him instead:

“You foul serpent!”

Crowley looked not surprised, more like he just went through hell, but like in an alternative universe, where he was not a demon and going through hell was something unknown and horrible for him.

“I bought diapers”, he announced and held up two shopping bags bigger than the two wolves that entered the arc centuries ago.

“Why?”

“I haven’t changed diapers since… I never changed diapers. How should I know how they work or what they look like? I fear we have to learn this stuff from the scratch.”

“You dare to come back just minutes after you dumped a baby in front of my door that some demon probably stole from its birth giving mother for whatever satanic reason?”

“I didn’t really dump it”, Crowley defended himself. “And I was gone for nearly an hour!”

“Oh”, Aziraphale said and glanced down at his watch. “It can’t have taken that long just to bring it to sleep, can it?”

“What do I know”, Crowley answered. “Will you let me in now? I feel uncomfortable being seen with plastic bags that have Hello Kitty and Transformers printed on them.”

“Consider it your punishment”, Aziraphale said crossing his arms, but stood aside to let him in nonetheless.

Just a few minutes later they were all three sitting at the kitchen table, Aziraphale on the right, Crowley on the left and the baby on the chair between them. Next to the empty glass of milk two cups of tea are placed on the table and also a single bottle of wine. Shortly the demon and the angel had considered to just replace the tea with wine and get drunk, but then they had remembered their duties and had chosen not to get drunk, just maybe calm their minds a little, while looking after a new born child.

“So, tell me”, Aziraphale finally said. “Whose baby is it? I didn’t take you for the type to never talk about your private life and then show up one day with a bastard child.”

Crowley gave him a blank look, took his gasses off and repeated the look to give it more weight.

“What do you take me for?”

“Well not that, as I just clarified.”

“It is the son of my boss.”

“What boss? When did you start working somewhere? I thought you paid your rent just by will”, Aziraphale answered confused.

“I do. I don’t mean some human boss, but the Boss.”

Aziraphale stared, then realization seemed to hit him. He looked down at the happily sleeping baby.

“The Antichrist?”, he asked incredulous. Crowley nodded. “Is it already time?” Aziraphale sounded somewhat sad at that.

“In eleven years, he will start the apocalypse and either heaven or hell will win, but earth will be gone”, Crowley verified and they both let their gaze fall into some dark void that seemed to have materialized just above the sink in the kitchenette. Neither of them said anything for a long time, just finished their tea, which refilled itself in a way unknown for the human eye.

Some hours later the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness awoke from his sleep and only then the demon and the angel came back to life. Slightly panicked they proceeded to check if the Antichrist was hungry, but found then they had to change the diapers, a heated discussion about whose turn it was followed with the result of a demon tearing the first diaper package apart, placing a diaper on the kitchen table and holding it open for the angel to place the Antichrist in it. Then they stared at the problem how to get rid of the diaper the baby was already wearing.

“You do it, you are the angel”, Crowley argued.

“Why should I be punished for that. I don’t deserve this. You are the demon, you do it!”

“You want to trust a demon with a new born?”

“It is your job in the first place since the baby was given to you!”

“You are really going to let this chance slip? To sympathize with the one eternal being that will change the fate of the world?”

Aziraphale stared at the demon, then threw his arms in the air and sighed exaggerated:

“Oh fine! I will do it, but after that it will be your turn!”

With that the demon made sure to stand back as far as he could as the angel rushed to take the dirty diaper off as fast as the speed of light, then shouting for some paper towels, which were handed to him by a very stressed Crowley. He wiped the rosy bottom of the Antichrist and threw the diaper in the trash, before he faced the next challenge.

“How does this work?”, he asked while looking at the naked baby that was reaching for its own little foot while laughing at the angel. Aziraphale turned around to Crowley. Crowley just shrugged.

“Was there no manual?”, he asked.

“You should know. Maybe you lost it, when you tore the package open so recklessly.”

“Don’t make this my fault.”

“Who else’s fault could it possibly be. Now, come here. It is your turn.”

“But you didn’t even finish your turn!”

“Oh, come on, don’t be such a coward!”

At that the demon just growled, then pulled the sleeves of his shirt up and hushed Aziraphale away as he stood to the table. With a scowl on his face he started to lay the parts of the diaper out more organized and carefully pulled the feet of the baby out of its mouth, before he began to wrap it up in the diaper like a weirdly moving Christmas-present.

“There”, he said as it was done and put the new born back in the basket. He sighed deeply like a surgeon after a successful operation. “I begin to regret that I thought it was better to do everything myself instead of just letting those nuns getting him lost.”

“Lost?”, Aziraphale asked confused from the sink, where he was profusely washing the rests of new born from his freshly manicured hands.

“Yeah, well. I actually had the task to bring the Antichrist to a hospital were some people from my side are working. They should exchange the Antichrist with the son of some Attaché, but they failed completely and misplaced him with the wrong child.”

Crowley looked down at the child that had long forgotten its former distress and was nosily reaching for the handle of the basket over it. As Crowley sat back down again, it seemed to notice him and shifted its focus on him. A bristle went over the demon’s body. The baby babbled happily and started reaching for him. Distracted Crowley took the little hand and let the baby hold his index finger. “Can you believe it? They misplaced the Antichrist? “

“So, you went and stole the Antichrist?”, the angel asked and inspected his wet hands.

“So, I went and stole the Antichrist”, Crowley confirmed absent minded then shook his head. “No, I mean, I mean I kind of did, but the Antichrist was handed to me in the first place so I wouldn’t call it stealing… Did I tell you they misplaced him twice?”

“Well”, Aziraphale sighed and turned the water off. He reached for the towel and remained silence for a while. Crowley overlooked the chaos in the small kitchenette. It consisted solely of the wrapping of one pack for diapers. Where to god did all this trash come from? His gaze fell on something lying next to the garbage bin and his nose wrinkled in disgust as he realized it was the used diaper that didn’t quite make it inside the garbage bin.

“What should we do now?”, he asked the angel. Aziraphale looked up.

“Well, your side expects you probably to bring the Antichrist somewhere, where he will be raised to become the one that brings the apocalypse upon us and they probably also want your side to win, so he should grow up under some sort of satanic influence.”

“But that is not what you want”, Crowley interrupted him.

“Well, of course not, my dear”, Aziraphale looked taken aback. “I am an angel. I am on the other side. The righteous side. The right side.”

Crowley snorted. “You really want heaven to win? Really? Tell me one thing: how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean”, He leaned back on his chair and crossed his legs, while he watched first confusion and then mournful realization wander over the angels face. “Exactly”, he said, without waiting for an answer. “You don’t want a world with nothing more than Elgar and Liszt for the rest of your life.”

Aziraphale looked like he wanted to protest, but only from a sense of duty. Crowley did him the favour to interrupt him again:

“You’d miss earth! Admit it!”

“I guess, earth kind of grew on me. We spent quite some time here and the food is nice”, mumbled the angel. Crowley just nodded and then dared to take the next step:

“Maybe we could prevent it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I plan to include lots of slice of life in this fanfiction, so if someone has suggestions to what little happenings could be included in the future, you are welcome to post them in the comments!


	3. Part 1: Little Prisons

“Why do those beds look like little prisons?”

The store was big enough to have aisles that went on for miles and just as far travelled the sound, whenever you asked a stupid question. At both ends of the empty aisle women peeked around the corners and cast weird looks at the demon. Aziraphale nudged him disapprovingly on the shoulder.

“Dear, you can’t say things like that in here.”

“Why not?”

“Because”, The angel lowered his voice to a whisper. He glanced over the demon’s shoulder to the woman that was still standing at the end of the aisle as if she was looking at some sort of high chair for babies to sit at the table with the grownups. Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed as he saw the boy she was holding at her hand. He just knew the boy already was too big for the chair. There was no way she wasn’t just standing there to listen in on their conversation. “What a snoop.” He caught himself again. “Because, my dear, people here like little humans and they don’t want to hear them getting put in prison.”

“But have you seen those things? They look like babies are godblessed jail-breakers!” Crowley continued to walk the rows of beds and cribs for babies and toddlers up and down. “You really think the bars have to be that high?” He looked down at the sleeping child in the basket he was carrying around. “He doesn’t even reach my knees, why would he need bars that nearly go up to my hips?”

They both looked at his hips.

Aziraphale coughed. “He won’t always be that small. He will just stay in there until he is tall enough to reach up to the bars. That way we don’t need to buy another bed for him for the next few years.”

Crowley didn’t look satisfied.

“I think if it would be about money, those things wouldn’t be so godblessed expensive. Why do people still want to put up with all this trouble?” He started to examine a crib on wheels but wheeled it back after a short while. Confused he made a distinction between beds that seemed to be clearly male and others clearly female, while he thought himself to be entirely sure that beds and other kinds of furniture had no gender or sex at all. Still, there were white and rose painted, elegant cribs with princess gowns, pink bows and the big letters “for girls” advertising for them and on the other side beds that looked like race cars, ships or ship wrecks with colours that screamed either “lady-killer” or “sky over the open sea” and had the words „for little men and pirates” printed on them. Crowley felt a little lost.

“Maybe you could ask someone, dear.”

Crowley wasn’t exactly sure that was the right thing to do, but on the other side… He was still thinking on whether he wanted to put up with salespeople or not, as a woman wandered into the aisle. She looked too young to have a child herself as she was probably only a teenager and wore her long dark hair in two dancing ponytails, also she was wearing a name tag. Before Crowley could stop himself, he asked:

“What do you buy, when you have neither a girl nor a pirate?”

“Excuse me?”, the young woman asked confused.

“It neither is a little man, just a…”, Crowley stopped himself, before he could call the Antichrist a normal baby, “…boy.”

“Ah”, said the saleswoman with a lost smile on her face. Crowley heard Aziraphale taking a deep breath.

“What do you recommend?”, the angel asked and presented his finest smile to erase the idea from her mind that they were people that shouldn’t be entrusted with a baby. The woman, Katie, as her name tag said, looked shortly over the shelves and then put the smile back on her lips.

“Well, this bed here is the most popular we have that can be used for children of both genders, if you don’t want to buy a gender-specific one.” She pulled out a bed that looked indeed genderless and more or less fine for them as they had no clue of what would be a good choice here. Yet, they both stepped closer and inspected the crib from all sides like responsible parents.

“Can I just ask one question? Do the bars have to be that high?”, Crowley asked and pointed at the little prison.

“Of course, you don’t want the child to fall out”, the woman said, “and once the baby starts to stand up and walk it will try anything to get out of his bed to get to his toys or his parents.”

Both the angel and demon looked guilty at that. Was it obvious that they took the baby from its real father, Satan and also from its assigned human foster parents? They felt quite uncomfortable first stealing the child and then putting it into a little prison to prevent it from running away.

“We- we are his parents”, Aziraphale said hastily. Katie frowned and smiled then.

“Well of course!” She almost made a little jump and nodded reassuringly at them. “You don’t need to worry that we have anything against same-sex relationships. After all, this is the 20th century, isn’t it? Did you adopt?”

“Er”, the angel said and Crowley quickly cut in:

“Of course! Adoption! We certainly didn’t take him illegally!” He laughed awkwardly. Luckily, Katie didn’t seem to notice his nervousness and bend down to take a closer look at the Antichrist. He was still sleeping and she just carefully brushed her finger down his little nose and cooed at the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness:

“What a cutie tootsie!” She straightened up again. “What did you call him?”

“…” Crowley said. “Er…”

“The A…”, Aziraphale began, before his breath caught in his throat and he had to drag the ‘a’ through a cough with no idea where it would lead him. “…aaaaaaaa…”

“A?”, asked Katie.

“Ah!”, called Crowley and pointed his finger into the air.

“What?”, Katie looked confused.

“Ah”, repeated Crowley. “You are asking for the name. The name of the baby.”

“Yes.” Katie furrowed her eyebrows. “That is what I asked. What did you name it?”

Silence.

In his mind Crowley searched hurriedly for another name than the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness. His mind was completely blank. What was his own name again? Something with a ‘s’? He was a serpent, wasn’t he? One would think his name started with a long hissing sound. Why did he even bother with names that started with any other letter than ‘s’? ‘A’, ‘a’, what the heaven of a name started with an ‚a`?

“Adam?”, Aziraphale said. It sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Adam!”, the saleswoman exclaimed. “What a wonderful name! Are you very religious?”

“Erg…”, Crowley rummaged uncomfortable about that question. “I guess, one could say so, but more in a theoretical and factual manner. Like when you know there is a god and all the stuff written in the bible too, but you don’t particularly like God, more like she is your adversary and you actually try to work against her.”

“Yeah, I get that”, Katie nodded thoughtfully. “I can imagine that it must be hard to grow up with a religion, that discriminates people for who they love. Leviticus or how that guy is called that always talks about one man shall not lie with another must be really hard to swallow for you.”

Crowley blinked behind his sunglasses.

“It was Leviticus, right?”

“Right, right”, the angel said hastily and pulled at the crib. “We will buy this one then. Should we just carry it to the cash register?” He tugged at Crowley’s arm to make him snap out of the thoughts he seems to be lost in. „Come on, my dear. Would you help me?”

“Oh, don’t bother”, Katie said. “This one is only the display item. I get you your crib from the storage room. Just a second.”

“We will need two”, Crowley called after her.

“Why would you need two?”, asked Katie and stopped on her way to the storage room. “You have a second child?”

“No, but we have two places, so we will need two cribs”, Aziraphale explained. This could have been the end of this, but Katie turned back around to them and looked at them curious.

“Do you not live in the same place?”

“No”, Crowley shifted uncomfortably. What did it concern this stranger how they lived their life? “We have both our own place and the anti- Adam shall have it equally nice in both homes so he will not be inclined to prefer one home and one parental figure over the other”, he added quiet defensively.

“Not to overstep”, Katie began. Aziraphale and Crowley shot a knowing look at each other, as she gathered her words, “but I think it is the best for a child to grow up with both parents together. I understand that a lot of couples want to get divorced even if they have children, but to adopt a child while being already separated and living in two different places is quite new to me and I really question if it is healthy for a child. Won’t you try and stay together at least for the next few years? For the child’s sake?”

“Look”, Crowley began.

“Thank you for your concern, but we have everything under control.” Aziraphale took the basket from Crowley as the Antichrist began to stir in it. He started softly rocking it back and forth.

“I can’t live together with him. I have a perfectly fine flat and he has a questionably adequate bookstore, which he refuses to leave. There is really no need to change that.”

“You know I can’t leave my books alone, my dear. They need to be looked after in case they get too dry, because say there happens to be a fire or they get too moist. Mould and humidity are the enemy of books.”

“And I won’t exchange my flat for your broom closet of an apartment. My flat is clean, spacious and the epitome of style. You wouldn’t find a single piece of dust in there.”

“That’s because you don’t live there! That’s just where you are keeping your plants, but you always hang around other places or even at my place.”

“Oh my”, the saleswoman interrupts them. “You know, I really think, you should try and put that quarrel of yours aside and not burden the youth of your son with it.” She tried to put on an optimistic smile and clasped her hands together. “Why don’t you buy one crib for now and if there is no chance it will work out, you know where to find me.”

Aziraphale still rocked the basket back and forth, but stopped to go over this in his head and gave eventually in:  
“I guess this will have to do for now.” He looked at Katie and their eyes met. “And if there is any problem, we know where to find you.”

Katie bristled under what sounded like a threat from that nice-looking man that had the aura of a calm librarian that would rather sit the whole day in a chair before moving the cat in his lap and nourished himself solely with tea. She forced herself to smile and leaped away to get the crib from the storage room. As they were alone, and Aziraphale first glanced the aisle up and down to see if there were any nosy eavesdroppers to be sure if they really were alone, he sighed and said to Crowley:

“It seems we don’t really know what we got ourselves into with that, my dear.” He stopped rocking the basket and straightened his shoulders. Crowley muttered something in agreement. “However, we just have to find a solution for this, if we want to prevent the apocalypse.”

“Whatever you say, angel, but I am not moving in with you.”

“Hush you.”

“And really?”, Crowley asked as they started to walk the aisle back down. “Adam? Are you serious?” They reached the end of the aisle, where their shopping cart waited for them, already filled to the brim with more diapers, baby clothes, baby powder, blankets, toys and other things they were too afraid to ask if one really needed it. Crowley took the cart and Aziraphale carried the basket with the newly named baby boy in it.

“I didn’t see you coming up with a better name”, Aziraphale retorted.

“You know I am not good with such things. After all, you started it with the letter ‘a’. I don’t know no names with the letter ‘a’! I am a ‘s’-sound-person”, Crowley defended himself with his earlier founded theory.

“Your name starts with an ‘a’!”

“Crowley?”

“Anthony!”

“Oh.”

They remained silence from then on until they reached the exit of the store and stood in front of the cash register to wait for Katie with their crib. Crowley began tabbing his foot impatiently and stared at the other customers walking by them carrying little babies or wheeling strollers through the store.

“Your name also starts with an ‘a’”, he said after a while. „Do you think anyone will find that suspicious?”

“That all our names start with an ‘a’’? I think that is the least of our problems.”

Crowley hummed thoughtfully.

“I will nonetheless not move in with you.”

“We will talk about it later.”

“I mean it”, he paused. “We forgot to look for a baby stroller.”


	4. Part 2: Fighting angels

Crowley was moving in with Aziraphale.

He had still argued with Aziraphale about the topic and concluded, that if he had to move into the small apartment over the bookstore, he at least wanted to keep his flat as the home of his plants. He would just drive there every few days and frighten his plants into faster growing and then come back to the store, he had told Aziraphale.  
Aziraphale on his behalf had said, that was just fine for him, as he then had a higher chance of influencing the Antichrist, when Crowley had to split his time between the baby and his plants. Whereon Crowley had told him to make some space on the window sill so his plants got what little sunlight reached the apartment. 

“Why did you even ask me to help you move? Wouldn’t it be easier to just call someone with a moving truck instead of making me carry all of your stuff?”, Aziraphale complained as the accompanied the demon to his flat while carrying the basket with the Anti- Adam.

“I don’t need a truck. All I am taking are my plants and the watering can and I won’t entrust them to strangers.”

They reached Crowley’s flat and he didn’t bother putting a key into the door lock and just opened the door to let himself and the angel inside. While he walked straight to where he kept his plants, Aziraphale followed him absorbed in thoughts and let his eyes wander over the clean and white surfaces that seem to come straight out of the catalogue of a store for very expensive furniture. Aziraphale’s bedroom looked itself like no one was ever sleeping in it, but that was more because he even used his bed to pile his books on and moreover dust. Crowley’s flat looked like even dust stayed away from it to not get fingerprints on the couch.

“How can you live in here?”, he asked absentmindedly and set the basket with the child on the floor. His arm was already sore from all the carrying and he had to shake it a little. He really looked forward to putting the stroller they had bought together.

“What do you mean?”, Crowley asked and took one of the larger pots from a desk.

“We’ve been alive for thousands of years and your flat looks like you just moved in yesterday.”

“I guess I am just not in here very often. Mostly for sleeping or…”, He glanced down threateningly at the trembling plant in his arms and continued slowly, “…looking…after my plants.”

“Should this little fig be shaking like that?”

“This small guy has been a little behind his friends in the last weeks”, Crowley explained smiling softly down at the plant.

“You are going to be a very frightening parental figure.”

“I will be the cool parental figure”, Crowley corrected him. “I will be the bad influence that shows the boy the pros of being a demon and a sinner.”

“That is literally the worst description of a parent I have ever heard.” Aziraphale shook his head and put the basket down as the little boy began to fidget in it. “Now what’s the problem?”, he said more to himself than to anybody else and took the baby out of the basket as it just began to tear up.

“Maybe we have to change the diapers?”, Crowley suggested and just in case, hold on more tightly to his flowerpot to ensure that this time he wasn’t the one to do the changing.

“No, that can’t be it. It is not that long since we changed them last.” Aziraphale swayed the baby soothingly in his arms and sniffed to find out if the diapers were the problem anyway. “I guess he is just hungry.”

“Did you bring his milk?”

“Of course, I brought his milk. It is in the car.”

“Then I will bring down the pot and bring it back up. Wait for me.” The demon grabbed better hold of the pot and walked towards the door. After a few seconds the door closed shut and Aziraphale felt he was alone with the Antichrist in the very stylish and very empty flat.

Lost in thought he wandered up to the windows while never stopping to rock the child in his arms. It eventually stopped crying, but started again whenever he attempted to stop with the rocking. The view from the windows was quite nice, but nothing to impress someone who had wings himself. So, the angel continued to wander through the corridors and looked at the pictures on the walls.

Meanwhile Crowley put the flowerpot in the luggage space of his Bentley and threatened the plant, that if it would get only the littlest bit of soil onto the car, it would have to leave the trunk very… abruptly.  
He then got the nursing bottle from the passenger seat, got back into the building and drove the elevator back up to his apartment. The angel was nowhere to be found.

“Angel?”, Crowley asked and searched the spacious flat. He found the blonde man standing in the hallway where he had put up for decoration. The angel was standing in front of it, swaying from one foot to the other to keep the Antichrist asleep and stared at the sculpture with his head tilted to one side.

“Here’s the bottle.”

Aziraphale’s head shot surprised up. He looked at Crowley and then shifted the weight of the boy on one arm to take the bottle with the other hand.

“I’ve never seen this… thing before”, Aziraphale nodded his head to the sculpture. The Antichrist was awake again and was already reaching for the nursing bottle.

“Just some art for decoration.”

“Yes, but it is rather tasteless, isn’t it?

“Tasteless? I always interpreted it as an homage to the great downfall of the angels. Angels fighting against former angels. It is in the best spirit of the heavenly order. Or should I say, hellish order?”

“Oh, they are fighting!”, Aziraphale exclaimed relieved.

“Of course, they are.” Crowley frowned. “What else would they be doing?”

“Oh nothing, my dear boy.” Aziraphale gave him the bottle back as the little child finished eating and patted the confused demon gently on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. It was just a misunderstanding.”

With that he started to rock the Antichrist back to sleep and bed him down in the basket again. He then put the basket on the floor and watched the sleeping baby for a while, before he decided that they could leave him like that while they carried the rest of the houseplants down to the Bentley.

After maybe half of the plants where in the trunk, the Antichrist woke up and started wondering, where Crowley and Aziraphale were. Thus, as soon as they came back through the door, he started making little babbling noises at them and reached out for them with his little hands.

“Just a few more minutes and we will be done”, Crowley promised.

 

-//-

 

“Do we have everything now?”, Aziraphale asked and looked the window sills over if they maybe forgot an especially small plant.

“I think so.” Crowley walked quickly through all rooms. „We have the plants and the watering can and I don’t really need to take anything else with me.” He went to pick up the crib. Adam smiled up at him. Crowley frowned back through his sunglasses. The baby started to reach for him.

“You don’t want to take that ugly sculpture with you?”

“No, I don’t, I- why are you laughing?”

“Nothing, my dear.”

“Are you laughing about the sssculpture? I get that you think it ugly, but where‘sss the joke in that?“

“I am not laughing about the sculpture. I am laughing about you.”

“Well that makesss me feel better. What are you getting at?”

“He is trying to catch your tongue.”

Startled, the demon looked down and indeed he had for some reason started hissing again. Therefore, his tongue was repeatedly shooting out between his teeth while he was speaking and every time the baby tried to reach for the snakelike tongue. Giggling he tried to grab a hold of Crowley.

“That‘sss not funny“, Crowley hissed and rushed to the door. “I will be at the car. Clossse the door behind you!”, he shouted over his shoulder, while Aziraphale was still chuckling to himself.

Crowley drove the elevator down alone with the Antichrist, feeling divided between glancing angrily at him and completely ignoring him.

“The only reason I am keeping you, is to prevent the apocalypse”, he finally said and immediately had to confess to himself that this was a rather good reason. So, he added: “I am doing it for a good smoke from time to time. I probably won’t get that once the apocalypse is over, since heaven and hell are both non-smoking areas. Never quite understood that though.”

The elevator reached the ground floor and Crowley walked out to the Bentley. He placed the crib on the passenger seat and sat himself on the driver seat, then waited for the angel.  
By the time Aziraphale opened first the door to the back seat, closed it again and opened then the door to the passenger seat, Crowley had already begun to drum with his fingers on the stirring wheel. The angel sat inside the car and placed the crib in his lab. Crowley looked into the rear-view mirror.

“You brought the sculpture with you”, he deadpanned.

“I thought it would be sad, if we would just let it here to collect dust”, Aziraphale said innocently.

“It wouldn’t collect dust. There is not one piece of dust in the whole apartment.” Crowley started the car and immediately the voice of Freddie Mercury filled the air singing “Another One Bites The Dust“. Crowley gritted his teeth and drove out of the parking space. He thought he heard the angel chuckle again, but he couldn’t be too sure. 

They drove to the bookstore in silence listening to the Best of Queens album and the constant giggling of the Antichrist. They both wondered if him giggling meant something good or bad.

 

-//-

 

It was quite a strange day and it ended with the three of them staying up really late. They tried to prepare one of those packages with pap they bought at the store and then spent half an eternity to bring the Antichrist to sleep in his newly put together genderless bed.  
Then they settled down at the small table in the kitchenette with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“Do you- do you think it is a good idea?”, Aziraphale asked after they had opened the third bottle of wine. Crowley lifted his head of the table.

“It isss my only idea.”

Aziraphale seemed to not hear him.

“I mean, I don’t even know if I want to prevent the apocalypse. You kinda made me think I wanted to, but how did you even do that?”

“I had argumentsss.”

“No, I think you were trying to tempt me.”

“Isss thisss about the tempting or about you?”

“I don’t, I am, I don’t know, but stop it.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I ssstop.” Crowley waved slowly with his hand and leaned back in his chair. He let his head fall back and started groaning. “I ssstop”, he groaned again. „But we are going to prevent the apocalypssse anyway. Jussst think about sssushi.”

“Sushi?”

“I know you like sssushi.”

“And?”

“There isss no sssushi in heaven.”

Horrible realization dawned on Aziraphale and he tried to protest by listing other things he liked to eat, but Crowley didn’t let him finish.

“Don’t have that, no, that neither, nothing there. Accept it, Angel. All the cool thingsss are here on earth. Heaven and hell have nothing. Hell isss empty, all the sssushi isss here.”

“Don’t you misquote Shakespeare on me.”

“The point isss”, Crowley almost fell off his chair and leaped straight up again. “The point, ehm, the point isss heaven hasss no tassste, no Ritz and no good cinemasss.” He put his arms on the table and reached for the bottle. The angel was hunched over it, hugging it like a drowning person some drift wood. He had a pained look on his face. Instead of taking the bottle from him, Crowley put a hand on his shoulder.

„I can’t deal with this right now and you swore you wouldn’t try and tempt me again!”, Aziraphale accused him. Crowley nodded and patted his shoulder in unison.

“Yesss, yesss, but we will prevent the apocalypssse, Angel. We will look after the Antichrist and even if I am not sssure what good- ehm, what neutral that will do, what other choice do we have, but to just get rid of him completely.”

As on signal a cry came from the room, they had put the baby to sleep. Crowley paused and Aziraphale shot him a look.

“We will not kill the baby.”

“We will not kill the baby”, Crowley repeated and sighted. “I will look for him.”

With that he stood up and tottered out of the kitchenette.

“Sober up before you take him out of the crib!”, Aziraphale shouted after him. “And don’t let him catch your tongue!”

“Ha-ha-ha”, Crowley answered humourlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I assume you all know about the... sculpture... of the angels... in Crowleys flat... that... are... f i g h t i n g.
> 
> If you don‘t, look it up. It‘s awesome.


	5. Part 3: The Ant-Effect

Anathema Device – her name meant “something that is strongly disliked or disapproved of” and can be used in many contexts, such as “childhood drama is anathema to children, that just want to enjoy the perks of youth, before being confronted with the cold, hard facts of life” – was eight and a half years old, and she was reading The Book, under the bedclothes, with a torch.

Other children learned to read on basic primers with coloured pictures of apples, balls, cockroaches, and so forth. Not the Device family. Anathema had learned to read from The Book.  
It didn’t have any apples and balls in it. It did have a rather good eighteenth-century woodcut of Agnes Nutter being burned at the stake and looking rather cheerful about it.  
The first word she could recognize was “nice”. Very few people at the age of eight and a half know that “nice” also means “scrupulously exact”, but Anathema was one of them.

The second word was “accurate”.

Lots of parents buy books for their children, in which the hero or the heroine has the same name as their child, so they could live under the impression the book was about them. In Anathema’s case, it wasn’t only her in The Book – and it had been on the spot so far – but her parents, and her grandparents, and everyone, back to the seventeenth century. She was too young, and too self-centred at this point to attach any importance to the fact that there was no mention made of her children, or indeed any events in her future further away than eleven years’ time. When you’re eight and a half, eleven years is a lifetime, and of course, if you believed The Book, it would be.)

She was a bright child, with a pale face, and black eyes and hair. As a rule, she tended to make people feel uncomfortable, a family trait she had inherited, along with being more psychic than was good for her, from her great-great-great-great-great grandmother.

Thus, she noticed immediately, when something went wrong.

As told, she was reading in The Book, under the bedclothes, with a torch, as she heard voices from downstairs. She put The Book down to listen and noticed it were of course, the voices of her parents. It sounded like they were arguing. Anathema picked The Book up again and tried to ignore the arguing, that was constantly getting louder.  
After a few minutes it has downright turned into yelling and Anathema tried to cover her ears with her pillow, but it didn’t help. When she heard a loud shattering noise, she couldn’t hide in her bed any longer and very quietly got out of bed and walked out of her bedroom to the stairs that lead down to the kitchen, from where the arguing was coming.

The stairs led directly down to the kitchen and Anathema sneaked just far enough down to see the mess her parents had made. Every part of the kitchen table was covered with folders, papers and sticky notes, that were normally put away in the big wardrobe in the study. Anathema knew, that it was all the research her parents and ancestors had made around The Book to find the correct interpretations of the prophecies. Someone must have laid them out in a hurry and had accidently knocked the flower vase from the table and it had shattered on the kitchen floor, broken pieces and crashed flowers spread over the floor in a large puddle of water.

Next to the havoc, her parents were standing before the kitchen table going rushed through the notes looking for something they had missed. They didn’t notice Anathema, who was hiding in the dark on top of the stairs pressed against the wall.

All the while they were arguing and as it seemed, her father had found something, he hurriedly picked up a couple of pages and looked them over. Then he howled as it was not, what he was looking for. He carelessly hurled the papers back on the table and shouted:

“I can’t find anything that would explain that mess, because there isn’t anything!”

“You just have to look more thorough”, Anathema’s mother answered angrily.

“It’s not my fault, that I don’t know, what’s happening! It’s the stupid Book!”

Now Anathema’s mother straightened up from the table and pointed her finger at her husband.

“Don’t blame The Book! It was never wrong before!”

“Well, it is not that hard, if you are as vague as that dumb witch!” He picked up another couple of papers. “I mean ‘when orient’s chariot inverted be, four wheles in the skye, a man with bruises be upon Youre Bedde, aching his hedd for willow fine’? What does that even mean? Can’t she just say “a weird carriage without horses like normal prophets do? But no, it must rhyme instead!”

“It doesn’t rhyme!”, Anathema’s mother snarled and grabbed the pages from her husband. “And Agnes was a real prophet, how should she have known what a car is? And also, we never were really sure if she is referring to a car here! She could be referring to something completely different!”

“As I said, it is easy to be right, if you are this vague! Is it a car or is it”, He snapped the page back and looked down on it, “is it Aspirin...? Pins? The descendant of Pulsifer? Whatever it will be, we will just be like ‘oh yeah, she must have meant that all along’ and correct it afterwards in the notes!”

“The Book is not always that vague! Some of the parts are pretty clear!”, defended his wife her great-great-great-great-great grandmother.

“Yeah, but what does it help now? Something has obviously gone wrong.”

“Nothing’s gone wrong!”

“Yes, it has!” Anathema’s father let himself fall in the chair at the table, that was covered in notes and papers. The puddle on the floor was getting bigger and reaching his feet. His blue slippers were soaking the flower water up, but he didn’t seem to notice or maybe he just didn’t care. He sighed deep.  
“Something has gone wrong and there are things happening, that are not mentioned in the book.” His voice was almost a whisper.

“You don’t know that”, said Anathema’s mother now calmer. “Just like you said, it is sometimes difficult to tell, what Agnes meant, so we could just be missing something.”

“No”, insisted her husband. “Something happened and future is changing.”

“Now you sound silly.” His wife tried to laugh it off. “You can’t just change future like that.”

“Yes, you can. It is just like the movies, when someone tries to travel back in time and he is warned, that the smallest mistake like stepping on the wrong ant could change the future and his own present. For us it is the same. When we, no, someone, like, it could be anybody, is stepping on the wrong ant, everything changes.”

 

-//-

 

On top of the stairs, Anathema listened to their conversation with wide open eyes. She didn’t exactly understand what was going on, but it must be bad. She knew how important The Book was for her family and she had often heard her parents argue about minor details, where they weren’t sure, what Agnes had meant, but they had never fought like that. Suddenly, she felt very cold and small and huddled against the wall.

She thought about all the things she had read in The Book. All the things about her life. A sudden thought came to her mind. If the book didn’t know any longer, what was happening in the future, then it was also not about her life.

Maybe the book was really about a different Anathema with a different future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, now I finally introduced another character besides Crowley and Aziraphale.
> 
> I really like lots of the other characters from Good Omens, but most of them only become really important, when Adam is already 11 years old.  
> Still, I want to explore what Anathema‘s life could be like, if it wasn‘t dictated by The Book.  
> Since this is a story about „how everything could have gone differently“, thus, there will be quite some changes.


	6. Part 4: Check up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the comments!  
> It really motivates me to continue the story! After I had read the book, I also wished for a version in which the angel and the demon would raise the Antichrist themselves, but back then I wasn‘t writing fanfictions myself, only fiction (without fans XD). I only just started with the fanfictions and just had to write this alternative universe, because sometimes you are just sad, that a book is over - not because you wanted the trouble with saving the world or all the dying to continue, but because you fell in love with a character and you just want to read more about them: how they spend their time, what makes them happy and just slice of life facts about them.  
> So, this will be the slice of life I wanted so much, after I had read Good Omens.  
> Enjoy!

Crowley had a Déjà vu, which is a French term describing the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before.  
Now, for a person, or at least something close to that, which has already as long as this demon has, repetitions in everyday life were nothing unusual. Still, this kind of Déjà vu was of the quite unpleasant sort as it was his… work calling, or more precisely: his Boss, of even more precisely: The Boss, and if we want to be really, really precise: Lucifer, the Light Bringer, the Fallen Angel that is called Beast, King of Hell, Ruler of the Bottomless Pit, the Morningstar, Grandfather of Lies, Overlord of Darkness, Satan himself.

Almost a year had passed since the faithful day, on which Crowley had received the basket with the Antichrist in it. One might think that a father, who just had sent his only son away to become the chosen one, the one on which the fate and future of the world would depend on, would call in a little earlier to hear, how he was doing. But not Satan. A year wasn’t much time if you have lived since creation, so it was no wonder, if he had just forgotten about until now.

But now, almost a year later, when Crowley had almost begun to think he got away with the theft of his bosses’ son, it happened. He called Crowley again as he was just on his way home, driving in the Bentley while listening to the Best of Queens Album, as Freddie’s voice interrupted the Bohemian Rhapsody to tell him he had another meeting with Hastur and Ligur.

“CROWLEY!”, he called him and Crowley almost drove into a pedestrian on the sideway.

“What?”, asked Crowley suddenly anxious. He asked himself, why Satan could want to call him. He never had done much communing with him and only bothered to contact him every hundred years or so. Was it, that he knew, what Crowley had done? Crowley himself never had been sure how much you could believe the rumours that God was omniscient and he certainly wasn’t sure if it also applied to the devil. Surely, if he knew everything that was going on, he would have contacted Crowley way earlier.  
That thought didn’t comfort Crowley as much as he had hoped it would. He grabbed the stirring wheel harder.

“HOW IS MY SON DOING?”

‚Oh god, he knows everything’, Crowley thought to himself.

“Ehm? He is doing great! I mean, he is doing not great, but great evil!”, he corrected himself hastily. “Very evil, indeed and still so young. He is certainly very ambitious.”

“…”, Satan was silent.

Crowley held his eyes fixed on the road and tried not to let himself be too intimidated. The last thing he wanted was to start hissing.

“I AM NOT SURE I CAN FOLLOW YOU”, Satan admitted. “WHAT EVIL CAN A TODDLER DO?”

“Oh, you would be surprised”, Crowley mumbled.

“WHAT?”

“What?”

“I THOUGHT YOU HAD SAID SOMETHING.”

„No? No, I haven’t said anything. Why did you call?”

„OH. I MUST HAVE MISHEARD THEN. I JUST CALLED TO TELL YOU, THAT YOU WILL MEET HASTUR AND LIGUR IN SHORT TIME AT THE HOUSE OF THE AMERICAN CULTURAL ATTACHÉ TO CHECK HOW THE ANTICHRIST IS EVOLVING.”

„Oh, you mean I should check on Warlock? The boy, that you gave me a year ago to bring it to the hospital with all those satanic nuns, who should swap him with the biological son of the American Cultural Attaché, so he would grow up in the ideal environment to unfold all his demonic potential.”

„YES…”, Satan hesitated. „THAT’S WHAT I MEANT.”

„Suuure”, Crowley said and turned on the middle of the crossroad. The loud noises of desperate braking and honking followed him as he drove back the road he just came from. He knew exactly, where the Attaché lived. „I will immediately check on the Antichrist.”

“GOOD. AND CROWLEY?”

“Yes?”

“DON’T FUCK IT UP, Mama, just killed a man. Put a gun against his head…”

As soon as Freddie Mercury replaced the phone call of the Boss, Crowley let out a deep sigh and then softly hit the stirring wheel of his beloved car.

“Ohshitohshitohshit. Why now? Why me?”, Crowley asked himself once again to complete the Déjà vu and looked at the passenger seat, where a shopping bag with the grocery shopping was lying, which he should have brought home for Adams dinner. He would be home late, but at least he could keep the food from spoiling, just like he had kept his fridge stocked for years without ever eating or buying anything.

 

-//-

 

His colleagues from hell were waiting for him a few houses down from the one of the unintentionally adoptive-father of the false Antichrist under a dark lamppost. It was already far into the evening and literally every other lamppost was alight.

Crowley parked the car on the sideway and got out on the sidewalk.

“Hi”, he greeted his colleagues, who responded with a muttered:

“All hail Satan”, then added, “You are still driving this horseless carriage?”

“Well, yes”, Crowley looked back to his car. “It’s only been a year since we’ve spoken last and mankind hasn’t had time yet to invent something new.”

The two demons stared at him, not quite understanding the sarcasm. Crowley weirdly felt like the kid that came back to school after a year abroad and now had to. realize that he had adapted a little too well to the strange culture and was now an outsider in his own home country. Hastur and Ligur had never spent much time on earth apart from short visits, that were mostly focused on churches and monasteries to tempt pastors and nuns. He on the contrary lived on earth and only went back down for formalities.  
In a lot of ways, Hastur and Ligur were much closer to hell than him.

Crowley gave a little wave and joined them under the broken lamppost.

“You are late.”

“I only just got the info about the meeting. No way, I could have been here earlier.”

“Now we art all here”, said Hastur meaningfully “we must recount the Deeds of the Day.”

Again, Crowley felt like he was having a Déjà vu.

“Yeah. Deeds”, said Crowley and ran his hand nervously over his neck. He couldn’t even remember the last time, he had done any deeds. Lately, when he thought about deeds, the only things, that came to his mind, were diapers and grocery shopping. Thus, he was glad, when he wasn’t the first to speak.

“I made a failed businessman make a deal with me”, Ligur spoke up. “For now, he is feasting upon his false luck, but in a few weeks, when his soul is rotten, we shall have him.”

Crowley was actually mildly impressed. It was certainly more than he had done in the past year.  
Hastur cleared his throat.

“I have corrupted an honest man. He lusted after his neighbours’ properties and I told him, he deserved them more. In a decade, we shall have him.”

They both looked expectantly at Crowley, who gave them some sort of shrug with his mouth and stepped unsettled from one foot on the other.

“I, ergh, I kind of was busy…”

The dukes of hell, Ligur and Hastur gave him a disbelieving look.

“Busy? With what?”, asked Ligur.

“With…” Crowley ran a hand through his hair. “With the adversary!”

“The adversary?”

“Yes, of course, you remember? My adversary, from heaven, he is on earth, I am on earth, he is trying to do Gods work and I am trying to stop him. Has been on his feet all year doing good and I haven’t had a chance to do some bad on my own. Couldn’t take my eyes of him.” Pleased with his excuse, Crowley crossed his arms.

Hastur and Ligur still gave him a funny look.

“You remember my adversary?”, he asked uncertainly. The two demons hesitated and then almost fell over their own feet, nodding their head and mumbling agreements.

“Yeah, of course, your adversary, the adversary of course.”

“From the other side.”

“Some kind of heavenly adversary.”

“Right”, Crowley said and thought, ‘they have really forgotten, who I am supposed to work against here on earth. And it is more or less the only reason I am staying up here for that long.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, it is not like Aziraphale on his behalf got to do much more deeds than him with all his bibliophilia going on.

“Well, anyway, if this is all sorted out, we should get to business.” He clapped into his hands. Together they walked to the giant gate in front of the mansion. A bodyguard was standing on the driveway, but he didn’t notice them walking by and through the gate. In the windows one could see the lights in the dining room, where three plates were set on a long table. A woman was sitting with her back to the window and was trying to trick a chubby child in a highchair that the spoon with mash really was an airplane.  
When Crowley saw her profile, he recognized her as the wife of the American Cultural Attaché. The chair before the third plate was empty and somewhere behind an open door the American Cultural Attaché himself was walking up and down and talking into his mobile phone. Another bodyguard stood next to the door across the room.

“The Antichrist”, Hastur said ominous upon seeing how the toddler punched the spoon away with a high-pitched screech. It fell on the floor and in the sagging of her shoulders, you could just see the woman sigh.

“Very evil indeed”, Crowley agreed.

“Is it though?” Ligur tilted his head. He sounded skeptical.

Crowley cleared his throat.

“Well, yes, of course. Can’t you see, how he is making a fool out of this mortal woman, being wasteful with the food and making her living by his standards. I can already see how she will call for a servant soon to bring the Antichrist the food he demands.”

The wife of the American Cultural Attaché bent down to pick up the spoon, but was too close to the toddler, that punched it out of her hand again, as soon as she had straightened up. Crowley nodded in understanding.

“I don’t see what extraordinary evil would be in his behaviour. Isn’t his demeanour normal for a human being of this age?”

“Yes, but this boy is no normal human being, is he? No, it is obviously the Antichrist!” Crowley waved his hand at the boy drumming on the table with his little fists. „That they believe his behaviour to be normal, that’s the most malicious part about it”, Crowley explained. “The believe in the utter helplessness of an inferior being that tricks you with his charms into tending to his every need and serving him like a slave is one of the most anchored rules of human society. You serve it, because it is cute. Why do you think pets are that popular?” He furrowed his eyebrows and shot a suspicious look at the now screaming toddler. The plate with the mash was lying upside down on the floor and every attempt to sooth the child resulted in a tiny fist being smacked into one’s eye.  
“Truly viciousss”, Crowley hissed.

The dukes of hell shot him concerned looks.

“I guess, he is yet but a child”, Hastur mused. “We probably cannot expect him to radiate power and change the world around him just by being, yet.”

“He will grow into it”, Ligur agreed.

“So, you will go back down and tell the Boss that his son is evolving… nicely?”, Crowley asked hopefully. He kind of wanted to wrap this up as quickly as possible, as he was already late for going home and check on the real Antichrist.

“Quite nicely.”

“Yes, I think, this will suffice”, Ligur said. They turned away from the window and walked back to the gate. The mansion was quite large, with lots of weird shaped bushes and trees and grass that was so green, it looked artificial. Crowley smirked as he was not unfamiliar with the concept of artificial lawn. How weird humans could be to destroy nature on the one hand and then try and bring it back, but… shinier and… more plastic.  
Surely, his colleagues didn’t know much about the destroying of the planet by deforestation, pollution and climate change. He would remember to bring it up as an accomplishment of the Antichrist the next time, Satan saw fit to send Hastur and Ligur to check up on him again.

“Well, I cannot say it has been a pleasure. I am sure, we will meet again”, Crowley said, as they reached the lamppost only few feet away from his car. The dukes didn’t say anything in return. Just stood there.

“Well, er, okay. I’ll, er, be off then. Ciao.”

He waved shortly at the demons and turned. As he walked back to his car, he could hear the dukes of hell talk about him behind his back.

“Just like you said. Wearing sunglasses even when he dunt need to. It’s all dark here. He dunt need to wear sunglasses, when there’s no sun around.”

“He’s been up here too long”, Hastur agreed.

Crowley grimaced.

‘They chatter just like a bunch of grumpy grandfathers’, he thought to himself and got into his car. Without another look back, he drove onto the street and headed home.


	7. Part 5: Changes

“Crowley!”, Aziraphale cried exaggerated a few rooms away and Crowley tried to sink deeper into the armchair, so he maybe wouldn’t find him. A loud crashing noise, then a deep sigh followed by the thumping sound of steps could be heard and then doors that were opened and closed shut again.  
Crowley rearranged the sleeping Antichrist on his lap so he could more or less glide down on the floor like water from a leaking vase. He slid from the armchair and kind of flowed under the living room table, that was like every other surface covered in dusty books, and, most recently, in toys.

He still heard the door, when it was opened wide and an angel entered the room with a loud shout:

“Crowley!”

Crowley pretended to be part of the furniture.

“There you are!”

“Damn it!”, he mumbled as he was discovered and then a little louder: “Don’t shout at me, it will wake up the boy.”

“Don’t think you are safe from me, just because the Antichrist is asleep.”

“Evil never sleeps”, Crowley replied and gazed up from the floor. Aziraphale towered now over him with accusingly crossed arms. He lifted an eyebrow.

“That doesn’t really help your case. If evil never sleeps, why would I bother to speak quieter. He would be awake already anyway.”

“I just couldn’t resist”, Crowley admitted, after he had thought a little about it.

„Resist what?”

“The pun.”

The angel shot him a pitying look. Crowley felt the toddler on his stomach stirring and held up his head to look if he was really waking up. He wasn’t. Instead he was rolling around until he lay upside down and could kick his feet in the demon’s face. Crowley blessed under his breath.

“Must be my heavenly influence. He is already turning against his own side”, Aziraphale said smugly. Crowley shot him an angry look. It didn’t look much different from his usual look.

“What do you want?”

“Good, that you remind me. You have to stop with the plants.”

“Stop with the plants?”, Crowley asked incredulously and spat out the foot of the toddler.

“I can’t even store all of my books and they have more right to be here than your plants. It is a bookstore, don’t you know?”

“I noticed, but I also noticed you haven’t actually sold a book in years.”

“How would you feel, if I made you sell your plants?”

“It is not a plant-store”, Crowley pressed. The big crashing sound he had heard earlier came back to his mind. His eyes widened and he took the sunglasses from his face. “Did you kill one of my plants?”, he asked in a frightened whisper.  
Aziraphale suddenly looked embarrassed. He hid his hands behind his back and started swaying from one foot to the other.

“Well, you see, I couldn’t find this book I was looking for and, er, I saw something that had the right colour underneath a flower pot and er, it was a really heavy flower pot.”

Crowley closed his eyes.

“Which one was it?”, he whispered.

“What?”

“I said, which one of my plants was it you killed?”

“Some sort of cactus, I think. Don’t worry, it was quite ugly.”

“UGLY?” Crowley bit on his fist to suppress a cry. „I only have one cactus and Victor was about to be in full bloom. I threatened him more often than the other plants the last weeks just so he would have a good start. It is not easy being a cactus around all those pretty flowerpots around him blooming almost all the time –“

“You know, I was wondering about that. Flowers aren’t meant to bloom all year. Nothing is.”

“And now he never got the chance. I suppose you already got rid of the corpse?”, Crowley ignored Aziraphale’s attempt to interrupt him by interrupting him too.

“Don’t be so dramatic, I, wait. Victor? You named the plants? You went on and thought of a name for every fudging plant you have, but when you were asked to think of a name for the baby, all you could think of was the letter ‘a’?”

“It was a stressful situation and, oh no.” Crowley blinked down on the toddler. The Antichrist had woken up. He already saw his face turn into a wrinkled orange, so he held him under his armpits and lifted him up as he tried to get onto his feet on the same time. It was quite difficult.

“Let me take him, my dear”, the angel offered and took the crying Antichrist from the demon. He tried to sooth him by swaying from side to side and petting his back, while Crowley quickly got up to get his food.

“Tribute to the Antichrist?”, he asked grinning as he had the colourless mash ready. Aziraphale shot him a look.

“It wasn’t funny the first time and it isn’t funny now.” Then his thought got kind of lost and he added. “Maybe we should go out for a walk. Fresh air will be good for him.”

Crowley left the feeding to the angel and got the broom from the closet. He put his sunglasses back on.

“Whatever you say, angel, but first I have to bury a body”, he said and disappeared around the corner to look for his dead plant. In his mind he was already playing out a plan how to use this unfortunate accident for his advantage so the other plants would grow faster. He probably would have to buy another cactus.

 

-//-

 

Aziraphale couldn’t put it into words, but something was different.  
Not different as in the fact, that he felt more tired these days. That was quite natural as he had to worry for a fragile little toddler all the time. It also wasn’t different in sense of living together with the adversary and having way more flora in his book shop and apartment than before. Somehow, there seemed to be something different about the whole city.

Lately, he saw way more people with weird hats or pets around. Just last week, when they took Adam for a walk, they happened to meet an elder woman with a whole dog pack on leashes and a hat with feathers that made her almost twice as high. Adam had started to laugh in his stroller and they had to stop, because he immediately started to cry as they wanted to just walk by.  
The dogs had licked his face.

And just as they were able to tear Adam apart from the doggies, they ran into a man selling balloons. They had bought one in form of a funny fish and the helium still hadn’t gone bad. They had tied it to his bed and he liked to reach for it and look at it, when they moved the rope so the balloon would dance around in the air.  
Then, yesterday, Crowley had asked him, where the staircase behind the bookstore was leading.

“What staircase?”, he had asked him perplexed.

“The spiral staircase”, the demon had specified, but Aziraphale still hadn’t known what he had meant. Crowley had to show him first. They had walked to the back door and looked outside and there it was: a staircase on the outside of the building leading up to the rooftop. Aziraphale was even more surprised than Crowley. After all, he was the one, who had already lived for decades in this building without noticing there was a way up to the roof!

“I swear, it wasn’t there before.”

“Don’t swear, angel.”

“Not like that, Crowley. I mean, I have never seen that staircase before.”

“Have you been up there?”

“Well, of course I have not! How would I, if I didn’t even know the staircase existed?”

“There are empty flowerbeds up there. I could use the better light to maybe plant some vegetables. What do you think about tomatoes?”

“Or you could make a graveyard for the plants, that didn’t grow fast enough for your liking”, had Aziraphale retorted. Crowley’s eyes had gone wide behind the sunglasses.

“Oh, what endless possibilities we have now!”, he had gasped seriously. Aziraphale had rolled his eyes and today, he still wondered about all those funny little things happening around them. He couldn’t help but suspect the small boy to be the cause of it. Still a baby, he seemed to shape the universe around him into being the perfect childhood experience a boy from the city could wish for.  
Heaven hadn’t sent for Aziraphale in ages, and he was thankful for that. He wouldn’t have known, what to tell them anyways.

 

-//-

 

“Have you thought of bringing his teddy?”  
Because of course, Adam had a stuffed bear that looked like he had already been in the possession of a whole kindergarten with one eye missing and fur that was itchier than straw.

“I would have to fight him for it, if I wanted to leave it here!”, Crowley called back from inside. The angel was already waiting with the stroller in front of the book store, until the demon would bring the fully clothed Antichrist out to go on their daily walk. Aziraphale smiled to himself as he thought about the demon wrestling the teddy out of the toddlers surprisingly firm grip.  
He didn’t have to wait long until the demon came out of the door and placed the laughing boy in the stroller.

“Tie him up. He has an outbreak-mood today”, he warned the angel then.

“Please don’t phrase things like that, dear”, Aziraphale sighed and buckled the Antichrist up.

“I am not joking”, Crowley insisted as they started walking down the street. “He broke out of his trousers almost three times before I could trap him with the suspenders.”

“Why are you like this?”, Aziraphale asked, but couldn’t keep himself from chuckling.

“Are you laughing about me?”

“No, my dear, don’t worry.”

“What else should you be laughing about?”

“I was just thinking about something.”

“About what?”

“About you keeping Adam from breaking out of his pants by turning into a snake and becoming his suspenders?”

Crowley stopped walking and took his sunglasses off. A passing woman, who happened to look at his eyes right this time, almost walked into the opening door of a parked car. Aziraphale just continued pushing the stroller and Crowley hurried to catch up with him again.

“Oh, you think, that would be funny?”, he questioned with a slightly red face.

“Quite so.”

Crowley stayed stunned silent for some time, before mumbling something to himself, the angel didn’t understand. Of course, Aziraphale wanted to know, what he had said and they kept bickering until they had reached the park with the duck pond.

“Have you thought of the bread?”

“Of course.” Well, Crowley hadn’t actually thought of bringing bread from home, but it was only a matter of the right attitude. Thus, Crowley took a loaf of bread out of the little shelf on the underside of the stroller without ever putting it in there. They placed the stroller in front of the lake, so Adam had a good sight at the ducks and swans floating in the pond and watching the three of them intently.  
They knew the game.

“Have you heard from your side in the last weeks?”, Aziraphale asked as he tore small pieces from the loaf and handed them Adam, so he could throw them at the birds. The boy’s tosses were horribly short. Therefore, his stroller was soon surrounded by chattering ducks, geese, swans, sparrows, crows and pigeons. There was always at least one pigeon.

“Not since they wanted me to check on Warlock a few months ago. I would have told you otherwise, angel.”

The angel hummed contently.

“I haven’t heard from heaven either.”

They were silent for a while. On the other side of the pond they could see a man in crazy pants juggling with apples, oranges and one tomato. He was surrounded by a small crowed and suddenly surprised everyone by throwing the tomato at the face of an unsuspecting spectator and then fleeing as fast as his feet carried him. Adam giggled happily and waved with his teddy bear at the running juggler.  
Lost in thought, Aziraphale threw his last bread at the birds and grabbed the stroller again. He turned to the demon.

“Dear?”

“Yes, angel?” Crowley tossed one last piece of bread at a goose, which wasn’t fast enough to catch it and the bread bounced off its head. He stared into the water.

“What,”, the angel began. “if the ducks would throw bread at us?”

For a second, Crowley didn’t seem to have heard him, then he turned around and looked at him with furrowed eyebrows.

“What?”

“We’d have to duck”, Aziraphale answered his own question and pulled the stroller away from the pond. He turned it around with some difficulty and continued their walk in the park. Crowley looked wordlessly after him. It took several seconds for him to break out of his petrification.

“What?”, he shouted after the angel. As Aziraphale didn’t answer, he started to hurry after him. “Angel, what?”


	8. Fanart

This is a little extra!

I usually update a new chapter every Friday, but I have drawn my first fanart and I wanted to share it with you!

Sadly, I haven’t figured out how I can upload the image so it is right away visible as a picture. I can only post the link to it:

<https://armageddoh-no.tumblr.com/post/183849735251/first-fanart-i-have-never-drawn-anything-from>

If someone of you can show me how to post it as an image and not just as a link, I would be really glad!

See you next Friday!


	9. Part 6: A new life

The boys and girls shot curious looks at her. The teacher was standing in front of the classroom, introducing the new girl.  
Beside the fact, that a new pupil in the class was always the most interesting topic, the other pupils seemed to sense that there was something odd about the girl. She was nine and three-quarters years old, had hair that only reached her cheeks and on top of that bangs.  
Everybody knew that having bangs never was about wanting to have bangs, but about a freshly undergone life crisis like the death of a grandparent of questioning ones own identity. She also had the look that matched with the bangs. A kind of ‘fed-up-with-the-world-but-still-forcing-oneself-to-be-open-for-new-experiences”-look she carried with cuffed jeans and a pullover big enough to fit a polar bear.

“Anathema just moved here with her mother, so I want you to be nice to her, if she doesn’t know something, okay?”, the teacher ended the little introduction. Some of the boys and girls nodded reluctantly. He teacher looked down at the girl. “See, if you find an empty seat and try to follow the class, okay?”

Anathema nodded and walked through the rows of school desks. Twenty pairs of eyes followed her. She found an empty seat at the back of the classroom and put her schoolbag down next to it. Then she tried to concentrate on the classes and take notes, finding it still a little difficult to adapt to modern orthography.

After school, she skipped socialising and went home right away. She liked riding with the subway, even more, because her mother had forbidden her to do so. Anathema got out at her stop and walked the rest of the way to the big building, in which her mother had rented a tiny flat.  
When she entered the flat, she was welcomed by the sounds of a lonely woman talking to herself while neglecting the burning stove for another book with a title like “I’ve been here before” or “The second life”, because the newest last hope and totally obvious lead was, that at least one of the both of them could be the reincarnation of Agnes Nutter herself and they just needed to channel the universe right so you get all the shows from your past life.

Anathema had cut her hair after she was forced to dress just like a witch from the seventeenth century.

“What’s for lunch?”, she asked as she turned the heat of the stove down and glanced inside. “Why is there paper in the oven?” She shouted into her mother’s soliloquies.

“Oh honey, I was just trying out this method to make paper look old.”

Anathema stood aside, while her mother put on the oven gloves to take to dry paper out of the stove. It had already started to catch fire.

“I don’t think that burned is the same as vintage”, she said and went looking in the fridge for something to eat other than paper. After she had found some milk and cornflakes, she moved half a dozen books from a chair by the kitchen table and started to eat. She looked the chaos over, while her mother hung the burned paper up on the clothes line on the balcony.

“Did dad call?”

“What did you say, honey?”

“He said, he would call me on my first day at my new school.”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot! How was school? Did you make some new friends?”, her mother shouted from outside.

“No, I hate everybody and everything and this place is shitty and I want to go back to dad.”  
The chances her mother actually heard what she had said, were low to nothing as she was still standing above a busy street, while cars and motorbikes where rushing by.

“You didn’t take the subway, did you?”

“I don’t see what’s so bad about taking the sub. Other children from here that are my age take the sub all the time. I saw them on my way to school.”

Her mother put her head through the door.

“Where did you see them take the subway?” She smiled innocently. Anathema didn’t blink.

“I saw them walking down the stairs to the subway, when I walked by to the bus stop.”

“Good girl”, her mother said and hung the last paper up. Then she closed the door behind her and started moving around paper she hadn’t burned. After a while, a red telephone appeared with a little blinking light. “Oh, look what we got here! A voicemail? It’s probably from your dad. Won’t you call him back?” She handed Anathema the phone.

“Sure.”

Her dad picked up after only a few seconds.

“Hey, dad.”

“Hey, Annie, how are you doing?”

“Badly.”

Her father chuckled.

“Don’t you want to start at your new school with a better attitude? This is a new life, Annie. Don’t you think it would be exciting to start something new? Something different than…”, his voice trailed off, but Anathema knew, what he wanted to say.

“If I wanted to do that, I would have had to stay with you”, Anathema murmured.

“Anathema?”, her mother asked, while putting on a jacket. “When you are ready, do you want to come with me to see a psychic?”

Anathema turned around on the chair so her back was facing her mother and took the phone in the other hand.

“I gotta go, dad. Will you call me again tomorrow?”

“Sure, Annie.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Anathema finished her cornflakes and then put her shoes and jacket on again to go out with her mother and see a psychic. They took the bus and then walked through the park to a small store for lamps with a sign in the window, that advertised for the psychic and his crystal ball in the back room.  
Anathema’s mother talked with the man behind the counter about her appointment. He had a weird beard that only covered the left lower half of his face, while his right lower half was shaved. He told them to wait for a second and went through a door with the sign “staff only”.

“A psychic, honey, isn’t that exciting? And they have so many of them in the city!”, she told Anathema while they waited.

“Can I go feed ducks in the park while you talk with him?”

Her mother looked a little disappointed, but tried not to show it, so she inhaled deeply and then nodded her head.  
“Sure, honey, do you need some money for bread?”

“Yes, please.”

Her mother opened her purse and handed Anathema some money. Before she could storm out of the lamp store, her mother put a hand on her shoulder.

“Honey?”

Anathema stopped.

“Yes, mum?”

“Be careful please and don’t leave the park without me. Wait in the park until my meeting with the psychic is over. You understand?”

“Yes, mum.”

“And you understand, why I am doing this, right, honey? I am doing this to set things right again. The Book might be wrong sometimes, but only in small things and in the end, it will still all come together as Agnes Nutter has foreseen. The world will end and we have to do our best to find out what has happened. I know being apart from your dad is hard, but I feel, that moving here was the right thing to do. The world knows, it is close to the end and if we just listen close enough, it will lead us right back on the path.”

“Yes, mum”, Anathema said and detached herself from her grip. She opened the door from the store and went on the sidewalk outside. It was chilly and the leaves in the park were turning brown. She looked around until she saw a bakery and went to buy some bread for the birds.

A lot of people were in the park and the ducks had more than enough bread to choose from, so Anathema decided to eat the bread herself and sat on a bench to observe strangers. There was a guy selling balloons and a lady feeding pigeons that were sitting on her head and shoulders. A lot of women with strollers were walking by, alone or in pairs chattering with each other and shouting after kids that ran too fast to the water. Even one man with a stroller walked by and Anathema heard him talking to another man about a graveyard for plants.

Curiously, she looked after them as they walked up to the pond and pulled a loaf of bread out from under the stroller. A baby boy with a hood that looked like a dinosaur was sitting in the stroller, laughing and reaching for the bread. Something about the boy struck her as odd, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  
Distracted, she looked to the side as a sparrow landed on the bench beside her. She threw it some bread.

“…and I was looking for a place to buy tombstones”, she overheard the guy, who was wearing sunglasses besides it being totally cloudy, saying. She threw another piece of bread on the bird and put the next one into her mouth. Chewing she listened into the conversation of those strange men.

“You want to buy tombstones for your plants? Tiny tombstones?”

“Exactly, angel. But instead of nice quotes and lovely phrases I will engrave warnings in them for the living plants, so they will know what awaits them in case they won’t grow fast enough.”

“Oh dear”, the man he had called “angel” said.

“And instead of R.I.P. I will write R.I.S. on them, for ‘Rest In Shame’.”

“Dear, why are you so passive-aggressive about your plants? I hope it won’t rub off on your parenting.”

“Don’t worry, angel. I can not threaten Adam into growing faster. We only have the one child. Where would I take the measurements from?”

Anathema ate some more bread and glanced over to the lamp store to see, if her mother was already coming back. At least, she had been right that the city was exciting. She had never seen two men raising a child and their conversation was quite funny to her. All the time, she had thought her parents had strange hobbies, spending every free minute to ruminate over some prophecies from the seventeenth century, but in comparison to building a graveyard for plants it didn’t seem so weird anymore.

“Want some more bread, Adam?”, the man with the sunglasses asked and held a piece out to the toddler in the stroller.

“Dada!”, the toddler squawked at him waving wildly with his hands. Both men froze up and the piece of bread fell on the ground, where a daring goose snapped it with its beak. The men turned to each other.

“His first word!”, the blond man whisper-shouted.

The man with the sunglasses didn’t say anything, just opened his mouth and held out his arms like he was trying to grasp something.

“Dada!”, the toddler repeated and started to giggle at his parents.

“He sssaid it again! He sssaid it again!”, the man with the sunglasses shouted excitedly as he freed himself from his petrification. Anathema found he sounded a little like a hissing snake.  
He went to the stroller and took the boy into his arms. “Look at you, already ssstarting to talk!”, he cued, the newly experienced pride getting the better of him, before he noticed it and his cheeks reddened a little.

“Well, I hope, that doesn’t mean I am ‘mama’”, the blond man rescued him, as he noticed his embarrassment. The other man laughed awkwardly.

Only a few meters away, Anathema put her face in her hands and smiled at the small family. The sparrow next to her started to chirp happily to get her attention back and possibly more bread. She threw him the last piece of bread.

“There you are, honey!”

Anathema whipped her head around like she was caught doing something forbidden. Behind her was standing her mother with a plastic bag in her hand and a searching smile in her face.

“I am sorry I took so long. Didn’t you feed the ducks?”

“I fed some sparrows.” Anathema pointed at the space on the bench beside her, but it was empty. She looked up at the sky, if it had flown away. “It’s not here anymore.”

Her mother walked around the bench and sat down next to her.

“I bought a book from the psychic. He really had a lot of interesting things to tell.”

Anathema didn’t reply anything.

“I think, it was good to move here”, her mother added. Anathema silently looked over the park and the pond. The woman with the pigeons had disappeared, but the man with the balloons was still standing there and now a woman walked by with probably half a dozen tiny dogs on leashes.  
The two men were still standing on the shore of the pond. The blond was crouching down and holding the little boy in his arms to show him the birds more closely. The man with sunglasses was pointing at swans and ducks and geese and told the boy about their names. The boy giggled, tried to pet the birds and kept shouting things like “Gak gak!” trying to imitate the ducks.

“London is weird”, Anathema said eventually.

“Why do you say that, honey?”

“I don’t know. I just feel weird here. Here is so much going on I have never seen before.”

“For example?”

Anathema thought about it. The old lady with the dog pack had started waving at the family of three and the blond man brought the little boy over, so he could pet the dogs.

“I have never seen a woman with so many dogs.” Anathema grinned and pointed at the dogs. Her mother followed her finger and also started to smile as she saw the pack of tiny dogs hopping up and down to lick the face of the boy. They were almost the same height as the ducks and some of them even were chased around by geese.

“What are you doing with that many dogs in a big city, anyways?”, her mother asked Anathema. She just shrugged. The park was still full of people talking to each other, barking dogs and the tumult of the cars driving by. It was a little breezy and Anathema pulled her jacket tighter.

“It is getting cold. Can we go back?”

“Sure.”

They stood up from the bench and Anathema took her mother’s hand while they walked through the park.

“Do you want to take the subway?”, her mother asked. “I am fine with it as long as I am with you.” She smiled down at her daughter.

“That would be fun.”


	10. Part 7: Poor cup of tea

“Would you have thought that burying a dead plant would lead to it growing back to life?”, Crowley asked as he looked down at the little tombstone in that pile of earth on the rooftop, where he had buried a cactus, Aziraphale had accidently killed roughly a year ago. The crop was still small, but he could nevertheless see the attempt of a blooming flower. He put his hands on his hips and shook slowly his head.  
“I mean, what is this? A zombie-plant? What kind of example am I setting for the other plants if I bring failed ones just back from the dead?”

“Do you think, we should get married?”

Crowley winced and snatched his head around so fast, one could be worried he’d broke his neck. His sunglasses hung half down his nose and he stared at the angel unconcernedly standing behind him.

“What the heaven?”

“Please don’t do this weird mixture of swearing and blessing.”

“Then tell me, what you are talking about”, Crowley demanded. Suddenly, Aziraphale looked a little embarrassed. He looked away from Crowley, who was fixing his sunglasses, and crouched down next to the Antichrist. The boy was sitting in the sand box, they had put up for him. He was playing with his toy dinosaurs and as he noticed Aziraphale, he smiled at him and handed him one of the dinosaurs.  
„RAW RAW”, he growled.  
As if he tried to ignore Crowley’s question, Aziraphale took the dinosaur. Crowley noticed his cheeks were a little flushed. He wondered about that and furrowed his eyebrows. Then two and two clicked into place and he filled in the silence:

“Have thossse women on the ssstreetsss gotten to you?”

“What women on streets?”, the angel asked confused.

“You know what I mean. The woman from the ssstore, where we buy the diaperssss, the old cashier from the sssupermarket, the neighboursss from next door and the women with ssstrollersss we meet in the park. They have gotten that idea into your head, it isss funny for a child to be raisssed by two unmarried men, haven’t they?”

“Well, you got to admit, we raise suspicion”, Aziraphale defended himself, while putting the plastic dinosaur on top of the small sand castle.

“We don’t raissse sssussspicion, we raissse the Antichrist.”

“Either way. Stop the puns and stick to the topic.”

“Maybe you are right, but what will you do againssst it? Asssk heaven for a new human form and this time female, ssso the neighboursss can badmouth how the boy is raisssed by an unmarried man and woman? That won’t help.” Shaking his head Crowley put the watering can aside. He walked to the top of the stairs and put a hand on the railing. Instead of walking down, he let his eyes wander over the rooftops deeply in thought with something.  
“I am going to check on the plantsss”, he mumbled as another thought hit him. He whipped his head around irritated.  
“And who in heaven were you sssuggesting we should marry?”

Aziraphale stared at him.

“What?”

“Wasss your plan, that we would go on one of thossse date-thingiesss, where you meet a woman one of your friendsss found at sssome potting classss and go sssee a movie together or go for a meal at a fancy ressstaurant and then you sssay goodbye and wait for a ssspecified number of days, before you contact them again?”

Aziraphale still stared at him, while Crowley tried to grasp the concept of dating.

“Sssoundsss a little like a job interview to me. You could go full deal and ssset up an advertisssement for a sssuitable woman to enter a relationship with you for the sssake of pretending to have the ideal nuclear family and not raisssing really a demon baby together with another demon. Do you think there are humansss, that are up for sssomething like that?”  
Crowley seemed to be ruminating. It was hurtful to watch. Automatically, Aziraphale accepted another dinosaur the Antichrist was handing him. He coughed.

“Well, you know, dear. I wasn’t suggesting we should marry someone else. I would think, the most obvious solution would be for us to marry each other.”

Crowley stared blankly at him through his black sunglasses, then opened his mouth and simultaneously took a step back. He instantly disappeared from Aziraphale’s view as he fell down the stairs.

 

-//-

 

After Crowley had reached the bottom of the stairs, the angel had shouted after him, if he was alright. The demon had affirmed that and said, that he really had to check on the plants. He didn’t come back for quite some time.

And then it was time for the Antichrist’s nap.

There was quite some difficulty combined with that. First of all, there was the sand. After playing in the sandbox in the roof garden all day, the sand had found its way into, well, everywhere. It was in Adam’s hair, trousers, pockets, shoes, shirt and mouth. The boy seemed to make a game of eating unbelievable amounts of sand, hiding it in his mouth and then, when they tried to feed him his mash later – because there was no point in washing him first and feeding him afterwards – instead of eating, he would open his mouth to let sand leak out of his wide grin like overflowing desert.  
Once the sand had made it into the book store, there was no escaping.

Since the incipient summer was already making good attempts in heating up the city, Crowley brought – once he dared to enter the spiral staircase again – the portable bathtub for the toddler up the roof.  
With the right attitude the bathtub filled itself with water once set up Aziraphale tried to corner the boy and catch him when the moment was right. Crowley distracted him by letting the plastic dinosaurs swim in the bathtub and Adam squeaked happily as he was caught. They shook out his dusty clothes and cleaned them as thoroughly as they were able while having a fistfight with the toddler at the same time.

“This is kind of fun”, Crowley admitted, while holding both of Adams fists in his hands. The boy laughed, babbled and tried to free himself, while kicking water with his feet.

“You are getting wet all over”, Aziraphale noted and massaged shampoo into the short blond locks the boy was growing like a good disguise. Nobody would have taken him for the son of Satan with locks that looked like a golden halo.

“It’s not like I can get cold anyways. Remember? I am coldblooded.”

Aziraphale put a hand into the bathtub and splashed water at Crowley’s face.

“Real grown up”, Crowley remarked. Aziraphale smiled and turned back to cleaning the Antichrist. Crowley also pretended to mind his own business and then let go of one of Adam’s fists to splash water on the angel.  
Aziraphale only hesitated for a second, before he put both his hands in the tub to more or less shovel water at his fine suit shirt.  
“That’s unfair!”, Crowley shouted before splashing more water at him with one hand, holding the laughing boy with the other. “I only got one free hand!”

“You should have thought about that, before you started this!”, Aziraphale laughed and shovelled more water into Crowley’s face, whose hair hung down like he was just rinsed by the sea shore.  
He looked at Aziraphale through sullied sunglasses. The angel couldn’t stop laughing. The demon had to avert his eyes to not also start laughing, but looking at the boy, who was beaming up at him like a little sun, wasn’t really helping. While he started to hide his smile, the angel had started hiccupping and sat back on his behind.  
Adam got his hand free and started splashing water around like some sort of sea monster. They played some more with his dinosaurs or as their roles were, the other sea monsters, before they wrapped him up into a towel and carried him down the spiral staircase.

 

-//-

 

Adam wasn’t really in the mood for his nap.

His mood seemed to go from one high to the next today. One moment he was laughing and tried to make Crowley and Aziraphale play with him and his dinosaurs and the next moment, he was lying on the floor, lashing around, crying and shouting.  
The demon and the angel did their best to calm him down. But in the end, they were just running around between the kitchenette and the boy’s bedroom, because they couldn’t decide, if they wanted to be strict and let him cry himself to his sleep or if it would be better to comfort him. Ignoring the boy was now even harder, when he was loudly calling out for his “Dada” and “Baba”.

After an eternity, he had as a compromise fallen asleep in Aziraphale’s arms. Crowley was making two cups of tea and brought them into the “living room”, really the room, where Aziraphale was storing almost more of his books than in the shop.

“CROWLEY! I have been worried!”, Aziraphale whisper-shouted at him over the sleeping boy in his lap. The Antichrist only stirred a little. Crowley set next to him on the couch and put the cups on the… on a pile of books.

“About me?”, he asked distracted.

“No, no, I mean, somebody was worrying me about Adam’s future!”

“You mean him turning evil and destroying the earth in favour of eternal hell?”

“No”, Aziraphale looked incredulous. “I am not talking about THAT. I am talking about applications for an adequate day-care.”

“A day-care?” Now it was Crowley’s turn to look incredulous. “Don’t you think, it is a little early for that? The boy is only around two years old”, he continued to whisper.

“Early to put him into a day-care maybe, but not too early to think about the applications. There are waiting lists, you know.”

“Waiting lists? For what? How can there be a ranking at all? We are talking about toddlers! What kind of accomplishments would we even write into this application? Speaks already over 20 words, can tell his parents apart from each other and no matter how long it takes, he will stop to cry eventually?”

“Well, for a start, we can only enrol him into a day-care, when he doesn’t need his diapers anymore.”

“Then why worry now? That will still take some time.” Crowley reached for his cup of tea.

“But, dear, we have to think about the future!” Aziraphale whisper-shouted and on the same time caressed Adam’s nose to keep him from waking up. He didn’t want to confront the boy with the pressure of society’s expectations just yet. Aziraphale paused and then added:  
“Also I think, he should maybe have some more influences than just the both of us.”

Crowley put his cup of tea away again.

“What could you possibly mean by that, angel?”

Aziraphale made a face. He started to tap with the fingers of one hand on the armrest, while his other hand still caressed Adam’s nose soothingly. Crowley was impressed by his multitasking.

“Well, since we are trying to prevent Adam from bringing the apocalypse upon earth, I was thinking, the best way to do this, would be to bring him to love earth. That way he naturally wouldn’t want to destroy it. Don’t you think, dear? But how could he come to love earth, if the only people he ever has contact with are you and me. We are not actually humans, are we?”

“So, what would you suggest?” Crowley reached for his tea again. He had to do something to busy himself. It always made him quite embarrassed, when Aziraphale was talking about love so seriously. He was fairly used to it in the context of saying that they loved to have a good smoke now or then or loved to go to the Ritz. Only today there seemed to rub him something in the wrong way about the way Aziraphale was saying it. Maybe it had something to do with the flabbergasting suggestion Aziraphale had made earlier the day.

“Marriage”, he mumbled into his tea only for him to hear. As if marriage would solve all of their problems. In fact, it would only lead to more problems! He knew about the ridiculous laws of humans making all marriages illegal, that weren’t between a man and woman as if you couldn‘t just as well promise your son to another man in exchange for a dozen goats and a piece of farmland. Sure, they wouldn‘t be able to reproduce, but Crowley also new about the laws against abortion. There should be enough children around to adopt.

If they were to be married, they would have to explain to everyone, how they managed to do it. As if they had done something unlawful.  
Now that he came to think about it… it probably was against some law in heaven and hell, too.

For ethereal beings there were no marriages between two men, because there were no men to begin with. Angels were just as sexless as demons unless they really wanted to make an effort.

But marrying the adversary… it was probably just as frowned upon as kidnapping the son of Satan.

“Didn’t you hear, what I said?”, Aziraphale tore Crowley from his thoughts.

“Er, what?”

“I’ve said we could maybe get a babysitter for him. I’ve heard it is quite the essential experience for human children. He may be a bit young for it, but finding some babysitter he could look up to or fight about his bedtime with might be good for him.”

“You mean, we should leave him in the hands of… some stranger?”

Aziraphale looked at him intently.

“Well, not now!”, he said hastily. “Only when he is a bit older! We don’t have to have a babysitter right now, if you don’t feel ready for it!”

Crowley gripped the backrest of the couch to steady himself. He straightened up, took a sip from his cup, put it down, almost tripped it over, took it back up and took another sip.

“Ready? I am ready”, he assured. “I only want to wait until the boy is ready. Look at him. Can’t even defend himself yet. We can’t have the Antichrist getting into trouble without being able to defend himself. What would my boss say?”

“He would probably say something like, ‘What are you talking about, Crowley? You adopted a child and it got into trouble without being able to defend itself? What a shame. I am glad, my son Warlock is save in the house of the American Cultural Attaché.’”, Aziraphale deadpanned. Crowley was silent for a moment, then he put the cup of tea down again.

“You are probably right.”

“’Probably’”, Aziraphale retorted and you could here the sarcastic quotation marks on that one. He looked at Crowley, who seemed to get lost in his own mind quite a lot these days. He was worried for the pile of books he was putting the cup of tea down, up, down, up, because he feared it wasn’t long until he would spill the tea.  
With a sigh he decided to drop the topic and start doing some research on day-cares on his own. But he liked the idea of having a babysitter. For now, it was too early, but once the boy was older, they could hire one and finally go on their dinners for two again. He missed going to the Ritz without asking for a baby chair and having to leave before dessert, because it was Adam’s bedtime.

“Maybe we should invite the Gardners from across the street over. Susan Gardner always tells me Adam and their son Billy would get along wonderfully and they are exactly the same age.”


	11. Part 8: The thing we talked about

“So, how long have you been… in a partnership?”

“Not too long”, the angel replied courteously while pouring Susan Gardner a cup of tea. “We started out as adversaries, but after time we found that meetings with the purpose to destroy and undermine each other were much more pleasant, if they are held in a fancy restaurant. So, we started going out regularly to discuss details of warfare and enjoy a good meal at the Ritz, as you do.” He handed her the cup of tea.

Susan Gardner looked taken aback.

“I don’t.”

They were sitting in the small kitchenette, a sliced chocolate cake on the table between them and Crowley in the living room showing her son Billy how to correctly play Adam’s game of “put-the-geometrical-forms-into-the-fitting-hole”. In the meantime, Adam and Billy were sitting in front of him on the carpet throwing little wooden cubes and triangles through the air, squeaking hysterically. It came to Crowley’s mind, that not even Adam knew how to correctly play his game of “put-the-geometrical-forms-into-the-fitting-hole”.

“So,”, Aziraphale mused. “how long have you been… in a partnership?”

“I am married”, Susan corrected him. “For six years now.”

“Ah, how lovely.”

“How long do you know each other?”

“Er, yes, for six as well.”

“Six years?”

“Yes… six years.”

She looked around in the tiny kitchenette, then gestured quizzingly to the cake in front of them and the angel offered her a piece of cake.

“You have it quite nice here. I must say, I already live across your book store for four years and I have never once bought a book here.” She smiled. Aziraphale smiled back.

“I would be glad, if we could keep it that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some more tea?”

Susan looked at her still full cup.

“No, thank you.”

Suddenly, Crowley walked into the room, straight up to the kitchen closet and took a plastic mug, a handful of grapes and a rubber band out and walked back out. Both, Aziraphale and Susan looked over their shoulders to the open door, trough which they could only see part of a table and a lot of books, but not Crowley and the children. Some things were said in the art of “Here I have a mug and here I have a grape. You see the grape?” and then noise that sounded like an elephant slurping a snake like spaghetti through his trunk came from the living room followed by high pitched laughter of two little boys.

“That’s one of Adam’s favourite tricks”, Aziraphale commented, not quite able to hide his pride.

“He really is good with children, isn’t he? Was it hard to adopt?

“Well, you know how it is. Overpopulation, orphans, making abortions illegal, orphanages are overflowing, there are way too many children on earth and if you go and ask for one, they just tell you to take a number and a second later you stand there with more babies in your arms than you wanted.”

“Does that really happen?”

“No.” Aziraphale shook his head. “But we got Adam from a deceased relative, so there wasn’t too much trouble with that.”

“Neat.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. Susan didn’t look at him, because she was busy digging into her cake. She had straight brunette hair, that reached her shoulders and big eyes with the eyelashes of a deer. She was wearing a pullover with a llama on it and pants with a lot of different stains, some looked like pea mash, some like paint and others like tomato sauce. He replayed her answer again and again in his head. “Neat.”

He shrugged. Maybe it hadn’t been necessary to prepare all these lies about their deceased cousin Angela, who got pregnant, before her husband died of cancer and after giving birth, she died of heartache leaving her parentless son to him and Crowley.

The hardest part of getting their story straight was convincing Crowley, that it had to be his cousin, because it wouldn’t be believable, if the one with the nickname “angel” was the one with the cousin named Angela.

“So, how is…”, he began to change the subject, but struggled to remember her husband’s name.

“Greg.”

“Yes, how is, er, Greg is your husband, right?”

“Yes. I asked him yesterday to return a few books to the library, while I was away with Billy and he was searching hours for the library card and when he found it, he had to rush, because it was nearly closing time. So, he was still out, when I came back from the kiddy-dancing-class and when he later came back home, I asked him, if he had been too late to return the books and he said, no, he had made it just in time, but he had forgotten the books at home.” She took another bite of the cake.

“So… he is fine?”

“Yeah, I put a little chocolate ladybird into the pocket of his jacket this morning, so he has a little something and knows I am thinking of him, when he is at work.”

“How nice?” Aziraphale wasn’t sure.

“You know,”, she said chewing and took another piece of cake. “he is trying and it is endearing, but I feel quite lonely sometimes. I am so glad for every time I get to talk to another human being roughly my age. The whole day I am trying to associate with ‘googoo gaga, mama, da da’ and only visit other mothers having the same diagnosis of motherese as me or I visit my own mother, who is too deaf to understand anything I am saying, so the only thing I have left is talking to her parrot and all I ever get from that one is ‘help me, a witch turned me into a bird’.”

Aziraphale stared at her.

“You should visit me next time. I have this sushi set at home, so we could cook together!”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, hesitated and nodded.

“That would be lovely!”

 

-//-

 

When they said goodbye to Susan and Billy, they took the chance to also get Adam into his clothes to go out for their daily walk.  
While they were sauntering through Soho, Crowley kept making side glances at Aziraphale, until Aziraphale just looked back and caught him in action.

“What, dear?”

“I was just wondering, if Susan bought the story about your cousin Angela.”

“Your cousin Angela.”

Crowley let that sink in.

“It was probably better, that I wasn’t there, when you told the story. I would probably have messed it up.”

“You don’t mess up as much as you think you do, my dear.” They waited at a red light and watched the traffic go by. “Also, it didn’t seem as if Susan was too interested in how we got Adam. We always seem to underestimate how little humans are really interested in other people’s lifes.”

“She seemed nice though and Billy was fun to play with.”

“Only for you or did Adam have fun, too?”

Crowley laughed a little at that.

“I noticed, you did the trick with the grapes again”, Aziraphale said and elbowed him affectionately. The light turned green and they crossed the street. Adam was already tired out from playing so much and was asleep in his stroller. He was only noticeable, because Crowley speeded up every two minutes to look into the stroller, if he was still there, then slowed down again to walk besides his angel.

“You know”, Crowley broke the silence after a while. “I thought about the thing we talked about.” Then he fell silent again. Aziraphale turned his head in confusion, not sure, if he should wait for more.

“What thing?”

“The thing you were talking about, when we were on the roof and I was talking to the dead cactus, that came back to life and then you said something about unmarried couples raising children together and going on dates and setting up ads for a woman, so you won’t look weird, raising a child without a wife.”

“I didn’t say any of those things, if I remember correctly. That was all on you.”

“Well, okay, but you do remember, do you?”

“I do.”

“Well, I have given it a thought and it is not legal.”

“What?”

“Same-sex marriage. It is not legal in England yet.”

“A shame, don’t you think?”, Aziraphale noted seemingly unaffected.

“They will eventually legalize it, I am sure.”

“Well, they should better get on with it. The world could end in nine years.”

Crowley just huffed and started throwing his arms around in the air. He almost punched a passing by peasant in the face, because he was a threat to humanity even without his car.

“And you know what?”, he continued incredulously. “I looked it up and it isn’t legal anywhere in the world!”

“You really put some effort into researching that, didn’t you?”

Crowley coughed.

“Yeah, well. We don’t want to raise suspicion for being two unmarried men living together with a child, do we?”

Aziraphale smiled and as they had to stop for another traffic light, that magically turned red, just as they reached the zebra crossing. He put a hand on Crowley’s arm and said:

“We could still try to put up an ad for a woman, who wants to function as a cover for us.”

He smiled at Crowley, who first looked down on the hand on his arm, then raised his eyebrow at Aziraphale. His face froze like that and looked somewhat of a very stunned mask, before he spoke up:

“You are making fun of me, don’t you, angel?”

“WHAT? ME?” Aziraphale gave him his sarcastic look. “I would never.”

“You do it all the time!”, Crowley accused.

“You must be seeing things. Anyway, it’s green.” The angel took his hand from Crowley’s arm to roll the stroller over the zebra crossing. “You know, talking to Susan reminded me that we never go out anymore. We should do something.”

“We just went to that nice Indian restaurant last week.”

“Yes, but it ended with us leaving after only half an hour with all the food to take home, because Adam didn’t stop screaming. I mean, we should do something different than just changing the places, where we want to destroy the atmosphere with a teething toddler. That’s not romantic anymore.”

“WhEn wEre WE eVEr TryIng tO be roMantIC?”, Crowley screeched at him.

“Oh dear”, Aziraphale sighed and speeded up a little much, because people were staring at Crowley and he didn’t want to be associated with him. Crowley was speed-walking after him with swaying arms and a quite dissatisfied look on his face, as far as you could tell from only seeing his furrowed eyebrows and his lips that where pressed into a thin line.

“Wait for me, angel! Don’t try to run away from me! You can’t just run with a stroller!”

“I can and I will!”, Aziraphale shouted back over his shoulder, while curving around a corner trying to shake him off.

“Are you trying to shake me off?” Crowley was almost running now.

“I am!”

Aziraphale was approaching with alarming speed another red light, who just magically turned green, when he reached it. He hurried over the street and just after he made it to the other side the light turned just as magically back to red. From the honking of cars, he could hear, that it didn’t stop Crowley from following him. After a while, he had made the circle around the block and the book shop was already coming into sight again. The street was quite empty, so nobody was seeing him trying to make the run with a sleeping toddler in a stroller, while his partner was chasing after them and he felt save to slow down again. To make it easier for the demon to catch up he stopped the stroller and went to check on Adam. The boy was still sleeping. Aziraphale felt like he was fooled, because he for sure didn’t have such a deep sleep only two nights ago.  
He put one hand on the stroller, one on his hip and breathed in and out deeply. His gaze fell on something on the ground. Crowley caught up.

“Why did you run away?”, he panted.

“I thought, it was funny”, Aziraphale admitted and watched as Crowley also checked on Adam, then put a hand on the stroller, too, his other hand on his hip and nodded, looked at Aziraphale and tried to follow his gaze.

“What are you looking at?”

“A penny.”

“A penny?”, the demon asked confused.

“Yeah, it is one of the pennies you tend to glue on the ground, so passing by people would try to pick it up and then find out that it sticks. It is right in front of the store and sometimes I sit inside with sight on the street and can see people trying to pick it up. It always makes me laugh.” Suddenly, he felt guilty. He looked at Crowley. “That’s probably a bad thing to do.”

Crowley seemed having a hard time keeping up, but then it dawned on him.

“Don’t worry, angel, I am sure, there is no harm in laughing about humans sometimes.” He paused. “And even if, I think it would be the least of our problems.”


	12. Part 9: So far and still a long way to go

The interview didn’t fare too well. All they had done so far, was shake the principal’s hand and sit down on the other side of the table in her office. Still, they knew, it was already over.  
They had forgotten to discuss the details of the lies they wanted to tell today.

The principal of the day-care had shaken both their hands and then also shortly held Adam’s hand, who Aziraphale was holding in his arms and then let them inside of her office, where they had put the small toddler down in between a ton of toys, which he happily played with, while they set down on opposite sites of the desk.  
The office was actually the reading corner of the day-care. Therefore, the chairs were the size of chair you would give a four-year-old to sit on. So was the desk. Ms Weatherfield was still sitting behind it, bending over some papers and making notes with her pen. When she looked up, her feather-earrings dangling between her blonde locks, the inquisition began.

“What is your son’s name?”

This question was pretty easy and Aziraphale signed Crowley, that he got this.

“Adam”, he answered for them both. Ms Weatherfield wrote it down.

“And his last name?”

Silence. Aziraphale turned around to Crowley and blinked at him, meaning to say, ‘What was your last name again?’  
Barely noticeably the demon shook his head. Aziraphale blinked repeatedly. Crowley still shook his head, then stood up from the tiny chair and offered his hand to the woman.

“That reminds me, I haven’t introduced myself yet”, he said. “My name is Anthony Crowley.”

At that Aziraphale groaned. Oh yeah. He had forgotten that Crowley was officially his last name. Hurriedly, he tried to come up with a new name, but before that, he also had to shake Ms Weatherfields hand.

“My pleasure! My name is A. Zira Fell.”, just like it was written on his book store.

“I am sorry, what was your name?”

“A. Zira. Fell”, the angel pronounced overly clear. The principal of the day-care wrote it also down on her paper, but stopped already at the first letter and looked back at him.

“What does the ‘A’ stand for?”

‘My goodness, this is worse than the Spanish inquisition!”, Aziraphale thought and said as fast as he could not to make it look as if he had to think about what his first name was:

“Anthony.”

“Your first name is also Anthony?” She looked at him and he had to think about why she would ask ‘also’, before he realised why the name Anthony had been on his mind just now. He already tried to find an explanation for why the both of them shared the same first name, but not the same surname, but Crowley had started snickering next to him. To his luck, Ms Weatherfield didn’t need an explanation.  
“How funny”, she said and wrote it down. Then she laughed.

“I guess, that could never happen to me and my boyfriend.”

Aziraphale also laughed awkwardly and nudged the demon in the ribs, when he didn’t stop snickering. Adam, who was playing with dinosaurs in princess-dresses looked over to his parents and started giggling, too.

“Unless his name is Leslie”, Aziraphale jested.

“Or if my name would be Sam”, Ms Weatherfield laughed. „Just a joke! My name is Ariana, really dodged a bullet there, did I not?”

Crowley tried breathing to calm himself down. Ms Weatherfield looked back down at her paper and asked her next question:

“So which name did you pick for Adam?”

Aziraphale thought fast about it. He knew, they couldn’t say Adam’s last name was Crowley, because that would just be ridiculous, even more so, because his partner couldn’t have the same first name as the last name of their son, when he already had the same first name as himself. Therefore, his name would have to do.

“Er, his name is Fell.”

“Adam Fell”, Ms Weatherfield mumbled while writing the name down on the paper. This way she fortunately couldn’t see, how Crowley tried to bite his own lip to keep himself from making funny faces. It didn’t work and he had to hide his face in his hands, wheezing quietly. The angel gave him a warning look, until the demon started to cough into his fist.

„Thank you for your interest in our day-care. Unfortunately, Adam is still too young as we only take children from four to seven. If you want, I can put him on the waiting list for next year.”

„That would be great”, Crowley replied and made sure Adam magically found his way to the top of the list. Ms Weatherfield stood up from the tiny desk and shook the hands of the two men.

„It was nice meeting you. I am looking forward to have Adam in our day-care.”

„Thank you very much! And have a nice day!”, the angel wished and they had a hard time separating Adam from his newly discovered toys. Finally, they could wrestle the last Pterodactyl out of his surprisingly strong fingers and they left the reading corner and then the day-care. Outside, the stroller waited for them and they put Adam in it and buckled him up.

„What a nice place”, Aziraphale said, after they had started walking their way back home. „Do you think we should go to see another or will this one do?”

Crowley shrugged.

„One day-care is pretty much like every other, I think. We probably only had to audition for more than one, if we weren’t sure, if Adam would make it in. But no worries there.”

 

-//-

 

It only took them a few minutes to reach the book shop. They made dinner for Adam, fed him, bathed him and then brought him to sleep. It worked amazingly well. Since he always to crawl or even run away, scaring and worrying the demon and the angel nearly to death, he seemed to be able to tire himself out more properly and was always soundly asleep, when it got late.  
After Crowley had brought him to bed, he came back to the kitchenette, where Aziraphale was leaning against the counter. He made himself some tea, a habit he had only taken up, because he was living with a librarian now, then leaned against the wall opposite of Aziraphale. He then finally noticed the angel’s look.

„Something’s wrong?”, Crowley asked concerned. The angel looked down on the floor, ruminating about something. He then sighed deeply and said with a very heavy voice:

„I have to tell you something, that I shouldn’t tell you.”

„What do you mean, angel?” Crowley sounded worried. He pushed himself away from the wall and went to lean against the counter besides the angel. Aziraphale hesitated, then turned to put a hand on the demon’s shoulder. He squeezed a little to comfort himself.

„I am just worried and you shouldn’t be the person I talk to about my worries.”

Crowley looked taken aback and slightly offended.

„What do you mean by that?”

„I am an angel! You are a demon! Even if we try to raise the antichrist and prevent the apocalypse together, we should still despise each other, try to best, beat and defeat and not comfort each other! When heaven takes notice of this, I am not worried about them finding out I took a chance to influence the son of Satan not to destroy earth and heaven, but them finding out me trusting and spending precious time with the adversary! “

„So,”, Crowley tried to grasp the essence of what Aziraphale had just said. „this is not about some secret you cannot tell me, but the fact that you tell me everything and you feel bad about it?”

„It is bad!”, Aziraphale prompted and squeezed a little harder.

„What should I do? Comfort you?” The demon sounded slightly panicked.

„That will only make it worse!”

Crowley grimaced and panicked some more, because he didn’t know what to do in a situation like this. He normally didn’t make people feel better and was already far out of his comfort zone, whenever he had to be nice to Adam, so he would he would stop crying.  
Now, Aziraphale wasn’t crying of course, but he seemed to be in some distress. Crowley was honestly surprised the angel didn’t worry about heaven finding out they were raising the son of Satan together.  
He mused one really could look at it as some heavenly plan from the one side and some hellish plan from the other side. He should probably be way more worried for himself as he was the one, who had stolen the baby in the first place.  
But he had known that from the beginning and had he done it still?  
Yes.  
And did he regret it now?  
No.  
Resolute he reached for Aziraphale’s hand and held on to it.

„I am sorry, I have dragged you into this, but I wouldn’t change anything about it. I know there is a great risk that we will be discovered either by your or mine side, but this is the only way I can think of to prevent the apocalypse. I don’t want this world to end just know, because I can‘t imagine eternity without y-“, Crowley suddenly started to cough and had to look away, not because he wanted to hide his blushing face, but because he didn‘t want to cough in Aziraphale‘s face.

„An eternity without what, my dear?”, Aziraphale asked innocently as Crowley stopped coughing and could almost look him into the eyes again. Almost.

„Er.” Crowley thought fast. Aziraphale was still holding his hand. „An eternity without sushi, of course.”

„Ah! We really do share our love for sushi!”, Aziraphale replied. Crowley grimaced.

„Yes. Our love for sushi.”

The feeling of the angel’s hand in his was plainly obvious and he hadn‘t thought before, that a coldblooded serpent like him could possibly get sweaty hands, but he also managed to blush just a few seconds earlier, so he was quite in distress. He tried to cover his embarrassment up.

„Does it make you feel better, that I will probably too go to… the more despicable parts of hell?”

Aziraphale tilted his head to the side.

„It does. Also, what could be worth the punishment of the Lord himself, if not the love…”, he made a pause, „…for sushi.”

„Yes.” Crowley coughed again. „We should have some alcohol. What do you think?”

„Great idea, my dear! And if Adam needs us, we just sober up.”

„Yeah”, Crowley agreed and released Aziraphale’s hand to get the glasses and the wine.

 

-//-

 

They sat on opposite sides of the small table in the kitchenette and just started drinking then and there. After one or two bottles of wine they were already quite tipsy, but not quite drunk yet, because losing the feeling of the liquor too early would only spoil the fun.

Crowley put his arms on the table and laid his head on them. Like that he tried to empty the next glass. Aziraphale giggled a little.

„What”, Crowley began. „What wasss the thing you shouldn’t tell me?”

Aziraphale furrowed his brow.

„What thing?”

„The thing.”

„The dolphins?”

„Nooooo.”

„The sushi?”

„No, not the sssushi.”

„What thing do you mean then?”

Maybe they were a little more than just tipsy.

„The thing about, the thing you did, you wanted to tell me, but couldn’t, becaussse I am a demon and you are a… a… a librarian.”

„An angel.”

„That.”

Aziraphale reached for the bottle and refilled the space next to his glass. He stared down at the larger growing red puddle on the kitchen table …

„Whoops.”

The wine was in the glass. Aziraphale blinked and took a sip. He stared at the angel, who was laying with his head on the table and mumbling words he couldn’t understand. Then, suddenly the demon straightened up, put his hands on the table and shot his head forward as far as he could. His sunglasses had fallen down on the table and he stared with big yellow eyes at the angel.

„What?”

„Tell me.”

„No.”

Crowley looked taken aback.

„Why not? You sssaid you tell me everything!”

„Say what?”, Aziraphale replied confused.

„What the thing wasss!”

„Ah! The thing!”

„The thing…y…thingything.”

„It was, that, er, that, that is, heaven! Heaven is probably, er, in the dark, about, about the Anti, about Adam.”

Crowley sat back on his chair.

„You think so?”

Aziraphale nodded repeatedly.

„Huh.”

„Yes. I think they don’t know yet, because if they knew, they would have contacted me. Don’t you think?”

Crowley opened his mouth, looked at the ceiling, forgot what he had wanted to do with the open mouth and began licking with his split tongue over his teeth and lips. Aziraphale followed the movement with his eyes and forgot, he had asked a question. He took another sip from the wine.

„Maybe they never find out”, he mused after a while, quite surprised that he himself had said it and not sure what he had meant by it. Crowley paused and stopped licking over his lips. Then he blinked in that weird sideways manner snakes usually do.

„They don’t?”

„No”, Aziraphale shook his head and thought about it. The thinking hurt his head. „I mean, I only know about it, because you told me, but if you hadn’t told me, I guess I would have never found out. Of course, If you would have decided to raise the boy alone, I would have been bound to notice sooner or later, but if you would have left it with the satanic nuns like they told you to, how should I have found out about it?”

Crowley stared at him, while the concept of keeping a secret from God was oozing into his brain.

„But you have found out about the boy. Becaussse I told you. Becaussse I tell you everything.”

„Right.”

„What if I hadn’t told you?”

„You have to! It is part of The Agreement.”

„Aaah.” Crowley nodded. He knew about The Agreement. It meant he got to eat sushi with the angel and drink wine together. He glanced down at his already empty glass. „I am glad, we tell each other everything. That way I don’t have to ssspy on you, becaussse you are the adversssary. You jussst tell me, if sssomething isss up, yesss?”

„Yes.”

„Ssso glad we trussst each other.” He tried to reach for the wine bottle, but couldn‘t quite get there, so he just let himself sink down on the kitchen table with his face downside on the tabletop and stayed like that.

Aziraphale stared at the black hair, then noticed that Crowley was laying on his sunglasses and pulled them out from under him. He put them aside and sat back on his chair. The black hair looked soft and he lifted his hand to pet it. It really was soft.

„Trust”, he murmured and emptied the glass of wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After I had done some research for the last chapter I was quite sad about the fact, that Good Omens started in 1990 and the first country to legalize same-sex-marriage would be the Netherlands in 2001 - as it would take 11 years for the end of the world to happen, my angel and demon would have to wait until Armageddon to marry each other.  
> In my homecountry we only legalized same-sex-marriage this year and I am always astonished at how slow humans are in making everyone equal.
> 
> Sure, this is a fanfiction about a book about an angel and a demon messing up heavenly or devilish plans, but sometimes I am still trying to cover topics that are serious and important.  
> Maybe that‘s ridiculous of me, but enjoying relationships, that are not happening in media, because of queerbaiting and another cisheterowhitedude as a protagonist, is the reason, why I dream and write those stories to begin with :)
> 
> Hopefully, the end of the world won‘t happen, because I couldn‘t imagine eternity without sushi.


	13. Part 10: Temporary separation

„Why do I have tO gO THEREEE?”, the tiny boy cried, while Aziraphale was pulling him by his hand over the street. Crowley was following behind them, glancing around and making sure, nobody could confuse him with a demon watching over the son of satan.  
Truth, he really didn’t have to worry about that at all. The fact, that he was wearing a black suit, sunglasses despite cloudy weather and had his hands deep in his pockets, while carrying a teddy under his arm, made him more look like some pedophile trying to kidnap some child.

„Dear, you look like a mafioso or someone from that boyband that was on the TV the other day. Stop always staying three feet behind us like you try to follow us unsuspiciously”, Aziraphale told him.

They were all three really stressed out.

„PAPA! I DON’T WANT TO GO! I WANT TO STAY HOME!”

The angel tried to sooth him and convince him at the same time, that actually he really wanted to go to the day-care, that going to the day-care was a great idea!

„You don’t want to stay home, Adam. Ducky is here, not at home. Don’t you want to go, where Ducky goes?”

On clue, Crowley held the yellow teddy bear up. They weren’t quite sure, if the naming choices of Adam were a sign of his creativity or the lack thereof. Adam shot a snotty look to the demon and held his free hand out to grab the bear.

„I will give it to you, when we are at the day-care. I remember the last time, I gave you the bear, before we had reached our destination. I don’t want you running around in the streets anymore, you hear me?”

„No fair!”, Adam shouted and made a face.

„As if you were ever playing fair”, Crowley replied. They continued to drag the Antichrist to kindergarten like it was a death sentence.

 

Adam starting walking, talking and overall, arguing, had been a new milestone for the two ethereal beings and they had quite some difficulties with it. Crowley missed the times, where he could just nap through a whole century with the only one judging him for it being hell and not a child that would jump on your stomach and start shouting:

„GAWWWR GAAAWWRR I AM GODZILLA AND I AM GONNA SMASH YOU!”

A torturing method he would refrain from telling hell about. There were so many facets to this. First, the pain of having a child breaking in one’s ribs, second the yelling and threatening, that hurt in his ears and soul…less body. Next, the problem, that his torturer was the son of an even bigger torturer and last, but not least, he kind of liked his torturer. It was a fuzzy and unusual feeling.

Crowley was not quite used to it, but tried to compare it to what he felt, when he saw his car, ate really good food or listened to his favourite music. The feeling didn’t quite match, because he never had the urge to just get in the car and drive away from good food, but he did flee from time to time from music he usually enjoyed. Other than that, he didn’t have any feelings of responsibility toward food or music, maybe his car.  
He came to the horrible conclusion that one couldn’t compare the feelings towards food to the feeling towards a child one adopted. He even feared, they were more like the feelings he held towards Aziraphale. This funny little warming inside him, whenever he looked at them, followed by the urge to look unbothered and cool, but horribly failing in it, because all the warmth traveled to his face and made him do hell-forsaken-things like blushing.

The Antichrist didn’t scream anymore and let himself be dragged in displeased silence. Crowley experienced a feeling of relief as they reached the parking lot of the day-care and forced the Antichrist inside.

As soon, as they were in the playroom, Adam reached for his teddy, which Crowley handed to him and then ran off to inspect all the new toys to play with. The angel and the demon stared after him.

„Well, that was quite fast”, Crowley commented.

„Didn’t he want to say ‚bye’ to as at all?”, Aziraphale wondered incredulous.

„Maybe he doesn’t know that we will leave him here behind?”

„He still should not want to throw us aside for some toys like that!”

They watched how Adam started talking to a girl with red pigtails and how she showed him the cars she was playing with. 

„He has already made a new friend”, Crowley said proudly. „It was probably a good idea of you to bring him here. He should have more contact with humans and”

„I am not so sure!”, Aziraphale interrupted him. Crowley looked at him in surprise.

„Not sure about what?”

„I am not so sure, I was right. After all, he already has one human friend. What will Billy think, if he finds out, Adam has replaced him with other children? Maybe it is too early after all. He is still a child. Maybe we should try home-schooling and”

„ArE yOu oUT of YoUR MinD?”, Crowley interrupted him this time. „The reason we did this in the first place, was so we could have more time for ourselves! Homeschooling? You really want to spend every single minute of the day with the child? Never have the time to go to Ritz again, always listen to music like Old McDonald had a farm? Angel, what the heaven? Don’t you miss good music and food at all?”, Crowley questioned him like they were the only ones in the whole day-care.  
Two other parents that were just saying bye to their child next to them, looked at them and the woman whispered to her husband:

„See? Gay people also have marriage-problems.”

„We are not married!”, Crowley snapped at them.

„Yes, it is not legal yet”, another woman said helpfully.

„Dear, I thought, you were upset that we would have to separate from Adam, when we would bring him to day-care?”

„Aw”, the woman from before said dreamingly. She was currently holding two boys by their shirt collars to prevent them from wrestling with each other. They seemed to be twins. Crowley started to sputter:

„Well, no, I wasn’t. I just, I was just worried that he would like it at home better than here and would be sad.”

They looked over to where Adam explained to already three other kids, why the road for the cars wouldn’t be complete, before it had the capacity to destroy every flower vase, that was placed on shelves for decoration. The children started to carry all toys they could find together to build a bridge to the shelves out of them.

„So, you weren’t worried for yourself, but for Adam?”, Aziraphale teased Crowley. „Well, no worries there. That little unthankful brat has already forgotten that we exist.”

The woman next to them struggled to hold the twins back and just let them go, whereas they crashed into each other and almost nocked each other out in the progress. Then they started rolling around in the ground, trying to bite whatever body part they could reach with their teeth.

„Children really are little devils”, the mother sighed and nodded to Crowley and Aziraphale.

„Exactly…”, Crowley trailed off as he had to prevent himself from saying ‚literally Satan’s son’.

„Oh! Anthony and Anthony! How lovely to see you again! I see, Adam is already integrated!”, the principal of the kindergarten greeted them. She was wearing something that looked like a big pouch an artist would cover his statues with in the conviction even the packing had to be creative. Around her neck she was wearing a necklace out of popcorn.

„What a nice…necklace”, Crowley said. „Is it in case, you get hungry?”

The principal looked down and laughed.

„No! One of the children made them and gave it to me, because he thought, his mother wouldn’t like it. So, I am wearing it now. We have to support the young artists here!”

„How nice.”

„Well, now that Adam is here, we should probably go”, Aziraphale said and took Crowley’s arm to drag him out of the day-care. „It seems like he is fine on his own from now on, so we will go and come back in a few hours. Bye.”

„Bye!” She waved as they left the day-care.

„What do we do now?”, Crowley asked as they were back outside.

„Now, we go and have some lunch in peace!”

„But it is only eight in the morning.”

„Breakfast!”

 

-//-

 

“Do you think, Daniel likes me?”

Anathema turned around to Jasmin as they walked to school and tried to think of the kind of stupid looking boy sitting two rows before her in their class and never covering his mouth, when he yawned, which he did quite often.  
He wore expensive white shoes and always tried to convince the teacher to let him wear his baseball cap in class.

“I don’t think, he has ever said anything about you”, she replied unsure.

“That’s not what it’s about! You have to know without them saying anything!”

Anathema looked even more confused than before.

“Why do you even want to know? What is so important about it?”

Jasmin started playing with her long dark hair and looked around trying to cover the fact, that she seemed to be a little embarrassed.

“He is the cutest boy in our class.”

“Huh?”, Anathema replied and put her hands in her pockets. She had never thought about that.

“Don’t you think?”

“I have never thought about that.”

“Never?” Jasmin sounded surprised.

“I don’t really think about boys.”

They walked a while in silence. Finally, Jasmin said:

“My mum told me I am too young to think about boys. I should wait until I am at least 16 or older and concentrate on school or whatever. I told her, that I can’t help thinking about cute boys and my dad said, that the only thing I should find cute, are puppies. So, I asked him, if I could have a puppy, but he said no.”

“I wish I had a puppy.” Anathema’s eyes followed a tiny Chihuahua walking by on a leash. It tried to sniff some dirt lying on the ground and the owner had to pull it away. “A big dog. But then I would have to move to the country.”

“I don’t like big dogs. They scare me.”

“I think -”

“THE WORLD IS ENDING!”, a loud voice interrupted Anathema. Startled she tried to make out from where it came. Soon she discovered the homeless looking guy covered in rags with dozens of pockets, out of which empty bottles of whiskey were peaking out. He was standing directly on their path to school on the sidewalk, holding a sign up and yelling at the people walking by.  
The sign said “DoOM IS UPoN US” in rather scrawly handwriting.

“Maybe we should cross the street”, Jasmin whispered to Anathema.

“Nah.”

They continued to walk, while Jasmin started to cling more and more to Anathema. The man discovered them and started to shout “DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!” at them. Anathema almost started to laugh. As they just started to walk by him, he jumped in front of them and yelled:

“YOU WASTE YOUR LIFE! THE WORLD ENDS TOMORROW!”

Anathema almost made Jasmin jump by screaming out from the top of her lungs:

“NO IT WON’T! THE WORLD WILL NEVER END!”

The man looked so taken aback, that Anathema could just walk past him, while pulling Jasmin with her. While they walked away, the man stared after them, his arms with the sign sinking down. Anathema was still shouting over her shoulder “I WAS THERE, WHEN THEY CANCELLED THE APOCALYPSE! THIS NIGHTMARE WILL NEVER END!”, before they disappeared behind the next corner.

“That was fun”, Anathema then said in her indoor voice and loosened her grip around the pepper spray in her pocket.

“What the hell, Ana? Why did you do this?” Jasmin was pulling on her arm and looking at her like she had lost her mind.

“I was spontaneous.” She smiled at Jasmin. “Wasn’t it great?”

“I won’t go to school with you anymore, if you do that again!”

“But then I have to go alone!” Anathema pouted and also clung to Jasmin. Her girl friend tried to stay angry at her, but soon started to smile. Both had to laugh.  
They reached their school while still talking about how speechless the man had looked. Anathema was quite satisfied with herself as she hadn’t wanted to talk about boys anymore.

“What did you mean, when you said that the world will never end? Did you just make that up?”, Jasmin asked as they walked up to their lockers. “You totally made that up, right?”

Anathema put on a serious face.

“Of course not.”

Jasmin giggled.

“Originally, it was planned that the world ends in like seven years, but they cancelled it, because humans invented sliced bread and it is the greatest thing ever.”

Jasmin threw her head back and started to laugh out loud.

“You are hilarious.”

 

-//-

 

“What do you want to eat?”

Crowley let his eyes wander over the buildings. They had just started to walk away from the kindergarten without really think about a specific destination. At first, Aziraphale had started to take the lead by just grabbing Crowley's hand and dragging him along. Then after a while he had gotten slower and now, they were just… sauntering.

Crowley didn’t want to complain. He quite liked sauntering. Always had. Still he couldn’t quite comprehend what was going on.

“Did you say anything, my dear?”

“Where do you want to go to eat?”

“YOU WASTE YOUR LIFE! THE WORLD ENDS TOMORROW!”

The two ethereal beings stared surprised to the other side of the street and discovered a man blocking the sidewalk for two girls, that were trying to get past him.  
The shorter girl with brown skin and dark hair was holding onto the taller girl, who looked challenging at the weird, bearded man. Before Crowley and Aziraphale could take in the scene completely, the girl with the short black hair started to shout back at the man:

“NO IT WON’T! THE WORLD WILL NEVER END! I WAS THERE, WHEN THEY CANCELLED THE APOCALYPSE! THIS NIGHTMARE WILL NEVER END!”

In the meantime, she pulled the girl on her arm past the man and walked away from him.

“I like her attitude”, Crowley remarked.

“Why are humans predicting the apocalypse? Do you think they know something?”

“I don’t think so. Must be some sort of pastime.”

They turned away and resumed to saunter. The weather was quite nice, despite it being autumn already. The trees in the park started to wear their leaves fashionably red and orange and a spicy breeze was brushing through the streets and making the leaves dance.

“Actually, I am not that hungry. Let’s just keep holding hands and go for a walk”, Aziraphale decided after a while.

“That sounds… good”, Crowley could cough out after he had given up fighting the blush, that was creeping up to his ears.


	14. Part 11: Moods

“Show me your drawing, Adam!” Alexandra, the girl with the red pigtails, stood on her tiny chair to get a better look on the opposite of the table. The blond boy put his pencil aside and held the picture he was working on up, so the girl could see it.

The drawing showed a crayon version of himself, holding with each hand on to a taller drawn figure. The figure on his right side was wearing a horribly unfashionable cloth, coloured in every crayon Adam could find. Moreover, the figure had a big mouth, oversized dots as eyes and a black curve for a nose. On the round shape, that was supposed to be the head, it had something that resembled yellow hay.  
If the task hadn’t been to draw one’s family, it could just as well have been a shedding parrot.

The figure on Adam’s left side was coloured almost all in black with some hints of a red shirt underneath the crayon suit, two black semicircles covering almost the complete face and more black hay on the round head.  
Alexandra awed upon this masterpiece.

“You draw so good! Which one is your mother?”

“I don’t have a mother. I have two dads”, Adam explained and continued to draw. Alexandra didn’t sit down again and an odd look appeared on her face. She thought about that.

“But who makes your lunch boxes?”

“They take turns.”

The girl took this into consideration, then nodded and sat back down again. She then held her own drawing up to show it to Adam.

“Look! I also drew my cat!”

Adam looked up. Even the other children on the drawing table stopped to look at the picture of a blue cat, that occupied almost the whole sheet of paper. Four little human figures were squished next to it.

“Wooooooooow”, a boy with brown skin, his name was Aaron, awed as he saw the picture. “I wish, I had a cat that big!”

“It is not really that big, you stupid!”, the boy next to him called. He looked just like the first boy and was named Eric. Aaron turned around to pinch Eric in the shoulder.

“You are stupid!”

“No, you!”

“You!”

“You!”

“Boot really is that big!” Alexandra informed them and held her arms out as far as she could. “Boot is really a giant cant! It is, because he was enchanted by a troll-queen!”

“You named your cat Boot?”, Adam snorted and started to laugh so hard he almost knocked his head on the table. The twins stopped fighting to also giggle like a bunch of baby chicken.

“Boot is a great name!”, Alexandra defended herself.

“My brother has a leguaan! His name is Ivan the Terrible and he would totally eat Boot!”, Aaron shouted and tried to pinch the girl, so she punched him in the face.

“Ouch”, Aaron cried and fell of his chair. His twin pointed at him and laughed even louder. Adam climbed on the table to get a better look at the boy lying on the floor, throwing his legs and arms around in a tantrum.  
Aaron tried to grab Alexandra’s leg, whereas she also climbed the table with a loud scream. Eric joined them and they played three pirates on a lonely island against a monster, half shark, half aqua-man, that was trying to eat them for dinner.

The teacher had to come over and put them in time out.

 

-//-

 

When the hour came around, when most of the parents came to pick up their children from the day-care, Adam launched himself into Crowley’s arms, while not wasting any time to beg:

“Can I have a friend over? Can I have a friend over? Please! Pretty, pretty please?”

“Not today, Adam. Remember, we wanted to…”

“PLEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSEEEE?”

“…go to the hairdresser today.”

Adam’s face became a portrait of pain.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo…” While still screaming, he seemed to turn into pudding, pouring out of the demon’s arms and onto the floor like a puddle. Crowley took Adam’s hand and tried to pull the child back up, but Adam wasn’t having it.

“Haha, good luck with that, Mr Crowley”, the mother of the twins laughed as she walked past them and out of the kindergarten, holding Aaron and Eric by one hand each. Crowley looked after her and then back at the acting like a liquid Antichrist on the floor. He sighed.

“…ooooooooooooooooooooouuuriaiuaaaaaauuuuuuuuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiuiiuuuuuu…”, Adam still whined even though, it seemed as if he had forgotten, where his whining had started and was now making whale noises. While he did that, he was trying to swim on the wooden floor like in the ocean. Crowley looked over his shoulders and as nobody was watching, he crouched down and pulled Adam up with both arms.  
He then threw Adam’s backpack, that was lying abandoned on the floor, over his shoulder and walked out of the day-care, holding the Antichrist like an oversized pretzel.

“Where is papa?”, Adam, the human pretzel asked as they walked through the parking lot.

“Here. He just had to talk to the principal for a second and will be here in a minute”, Crowley explained. The principal had asked to talk to Aziraphale, because she wanted them to already think about, if they wanted Adam to go to the day-care for two years or more, before going to school or preschool. Honestly, Crowley thought it was crazy, that they already had to decide on something like that. Every time he wanted to decide something for himself, he first took an at least weeklong nap to think about it.

“Where?”, Adam asked and shifted in Crowley’s arms.

“Where what?”

“Where is papa?”

“He will be here soon. We just wait.”

“HOOOOOOWWWWW LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGG?”

Crowley growled. Adam was in a mood today. He almost missed the times, he could just put him into his walking stall, go away and let him rattle at the bars. This child-care-stuff was only getting harder the more time passed. Was this supposed to happen?

“Sorry, for letting you wait, dear.”

Crowley turned around, Adam swinging with the movement, to see the angel walk up to them from the kindergarten. As he reached the two of them, he took Adam out of Crowley’s arms just to turn him the right way up and put him back.

“What did you talk about with the pin-a-ball, papa?”

“Prin-ci-pal, my dear. Nothing important, but she mentioned you had to be put in time out again.”

Adam had the decency to look sheepish.

“Just a tiny bit, papa.”

“What happened?”

At first, Adam seemed to honestly think about it, but then a smile started to spread over his whole face.

“I played with my friends!”, he grinned.

“That is great, dear.”

“Well, let’s get out of here”, Crowley cut in. „before they realize they forgot to ask us into what kind of university we want to put Adam in a few years. That probably also has important impacts on his time in kindergarten.”

 

-//-

 

„Is this your first visit at the hairdresser, little man?”, the man with the sideburns and the hair looking like a paintbrush asked Adam as the demon lifted him into the black leather chair.

„I don’t want my hair to look like this!”, Adam exclaimed and pointed at the man’s head.

„A-ha-ha! What a rude little man”, the man chuckled and laid a black fabric around Adam’s shoulders to shield his clothes from the falling hair. The man, Eduard, like the sign on his door had told them, looked back at the angel and the demon and then pointed at the other seats, that were empty. „Please, sit down. Tea? Coffee?”

„No, we are good.”

They sat with some reluctance in the other chairs and tried not to wiggle around too much as the chair could spin.

„So, what should we do your hair?”, Eduard mused, his chin in one hand, the other hand on his hip.

„Only cutting”, Aziraphale told him.

„Can you make my hair longer?”, Adam wondered.

„Would you like to have long hair?”, Eduard told him as if he ignored Aziraphale and had a conversation with the Antichrist exclusively.

„YES! I want to have hair so long it reaches the floor and then I smash it around like a Rockstar!”

„No”, Aizraphale simply said, shaking his head slightly.

„Well, I can’t make your hair longer with my scissors, but you could wear a wig.”

„What?”, Crowley asked.

„YEAH! I WANT A WIG! I WANT A WIG!” Adam stood up in his chair and started to jump. The hairdresser put his hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him back into the chair.

„Just wait here a second and I get them”, he told him and disappeared through a door in the back. When he came back, he had his arms full with hair without heads. Adam’s chin fell almost on the floor and he tried to reach for the wigs.

„A, a, a, just wait a second”, Eduard admonished him.

„I really don’t think a wig is what we are looking for”, Aziraphale tried to protest, bumping Crowley into the side with his elbow.

„Oh, don’t worry. We just have some fun.” Eduard waved him off and put the wigs down on a desk. „First we have to put this over your head”, he murmured, while putting something that looked like a pantyhose over Adam’s head. The boy giggled.

„Now I look like a bank robber!”

Eduard took one of the wigs from out of the pile. It had crazy pink curls and he instructed Adam to put his hands in front of his face, so that his index-fingers were pointing at the sky and then pulled the wig, that was clearly too big for the boy, over his head, steadying it with the boy’s fingers.

„Now take your hands down. Yes, exactly like that and…. Voilà!”

Adam looked into the mirror and gasped.

„I am princess peach, but beautifuller!”

„More beautiful”, Crowley corrected him. Adam whipped his head around, which made his curls fly and dance through the air.

„Thank you”, he told Crowley in a high-pitched voice and blinked with both eyes very fast. „I am princess Adam. Are you the old and ugly wizard?”

„I am not… ugly”, Crowley replied slightly offended. Eduard laughed at him. He had picked out a wig for himself, that looked like something Marie Antoinette would have worn to her execution and put it on. With one hand he threw the corkscrew curls over his shoulder and gave them bitch face.

„You also want a try, gentlemen?”

„Try it. You can be my servants”, Adam encouraged them.

„We are just here so Adam can get his haircut”, Aziraphale told them at the same time as Crowley said:

„A try couldn’t hurt.”

„CROWLEY?”, Aziraphale called incredulous. Crowley just shrugged. Eduard laughed and pulled out a hair brush. He started to go through the wig on Adam’s head with it and told the demon and the angel over his shoulder:

„Try it and if you like it, you can visit me in my club on Saturday night.” 

 

-//-

 

„Are you happy with your new look?”, Aziraphale asked Adam as they walked home. Adam kept whipping his head back and forth, while walking and it was a blessing Aziraphale was holding his hand one hand and Crowley held the other one, because otherwise, he would have walked into a lamppost or in front of a car ages ago. He surely couldn’t see anything of the road, just his hair flashing before his eyes.

„Mhm”, he hummed and kept turning his head around. In the end, Eduard had cut only a few centimetres of his hair, but Crowley and Aziraphale had to promise him, they would give him a wig in his size for his birthday.

„Eduard said he would teach me how to dance like a queen. I didn’t know queens did a lot of dancing?”

„They do in the ballroom, dear.”

Adam thought about it.

„That sounds boring.”

Aziraphale nodded in relief. They reached the book shop and Adam abandoned his shoes, jacket and backpack on the floor to immediately run into his room and play with his toys.

„I told you not to leave your jacket on the floor!”, Crowley shouted after him. He took the backpack into the kitchenette and opened it. Surprised he looked at all the stuff in it. “What the heaven is all this stuff?” With a frown on his face he pulled hands full of paper out of Adam’s backpack and unloaded it on the table.

„Did he bring home all the garbage he could find?”, Aziraphale also wondered and picked up one of the papers.

„This one is a note for an upcoming excursion to the zoo. We have to sign it, if he is allowed to go… I didn’t know they did excursions in kindergarten”, Crowley wondered aloud as he read through the paperwork.

„This one is a reminder that we have to pay for the wool they need for the next handicraft work”, Aziraphale added as he had read his paper. He picked up another one. His eyes went wide. „Auditions for a stage play?”

„What?”

„They want Adam to audition for their play of ‚Snow White and the seven dwarfs’!”

Crowley frowned.

„Audition? Shouldn’t he be allowed to participate automatically? He already is enlisted in the kindergarten?”

„I don’t know…”, Aziraphale murmured a little distracted.

„Heaven, we put him into day-care to have less work with him, but instead they just watch how he draws pictures and makes new friends and then send us the paperwork. Why does this all have to be so complicated?” Crowley took the paper for the audition out of Aziraphale’s hands. He looked at it and began to smile.

„Do you think he wants to audition for Snow White, now that he found his love for wigs?”

Aziraphale frowned at him.

“Of course, he has to be a dwarf. Snow White has to be played by someone taller or there won’t be a size difference between her and the dwarves”, he replied confused. Crowley huffed.

“I don’t think, you know how theatre works.”

“Really?” Aziraphale threw the papers back on the table and crossed his arms. “You want to start this again?”

“You just aren’t a good actor”, Crowley shrugged as if the conversation was over with that. Aziraphale slammed his hands on the table.

“I was a great Raphael in Faust!”

Crowley shot him a look.

“It isn’t acting, if you ‘play’, what you are. If you would have played Mephistopheles, now that would have been acting.” He put a hand on his hip. “Besides, you weren’t even good as Raphael! You barely remembered your lines!”

Aziraphale gasped theatrically. This conversation would probably take some time. Gladly, before they could go any deeper into this discussion, Adam came running back from his room, looked in front of the door for his backpack and shouted after them as he couldn’t find it.

“Where is my backpack?”

“Here”, Crowley told him. “I told you not to leave it on the floor.”

Adam came into the kitchenette and had a look at the pile of papers on the desk. He pulled a large one out from under the pile and handed it Crowley.

“Here! This is for you!” He turned to Aziraphale. “I only had time to make one, so you have to share it!” Then, without another word, he ran out of the kitchen again and back into his room. Crowley unfolded the paper Adam had handed him. He was secretly glad, they were interrupted, before their conversation could turn into a full-on fight. When he saw what was on the paper, he almost froze.

“What is it, dear?”, Aziraphale asked, after Crowley hadn’t stopped staring at the picture for a few seconds. He came around to look at it himself and also froze.

“Did he draw this all by himself?”, Aziraphale asked after a while.

“He has quite a talent”, Crowley said with pride.

“A good drawing, really.”

“We should put it on the fridge.”

“Remarkable, how you can immediately tell who is supposed to be who.” They marvelled over their first family portrait some more, before Aziraphale added, “I just wonder why he drew that dog in the corner. We don’t have a dog.”

Crowley shrugged.

“What boy doesn’t want to have a dog?”


	15. Part 12: The witch

„I’m gonna open!”, the boy yelled through the house as the doorbell rang. He had blond locks and a smile full of gaps, where teeth should be. He was maybe six or seven years old, though small for his age and had just been sitting in front of his first homework from school, not actually studying, but trying to make airplanes out of the papers as he had seen the older children doing at his school.  
He was fairly new to how the social life of a pupil worked, but he knew he wanted to be at least as cool as the boys letting airplanes fly in class or from the top of the stairs, when teachers walked up the steps. When he had heard the doorbell ring, he had left the papers behind and jumped up to open the door. He bashed from the back into the book store to run to the front door and was immediately followed by the shout:

„No, Adam!”

The blond boy ran up to the door and got on his toes to reach the door handle. On the doorstep stood a girl, but Adam wasn’t immediately aware of that fact, because the first thing he could make out was a white skull staring with flaming eyes at him. Under it was written „WELCOME TO HELL” in white letters on a black shirt. Without looking up to the person, Adam turned around and shouted into the house:

„It is for you, Dada!”

Crowley appeared in the book shop.

„Adam! I have told you a million times you shall not open the door alone! It could be a stranger!”

„It is a girl!”, clarified Adam as he looked back to the person in the doorway. The girl had short black hair and a pale face, that made her look like some sort of vampire or another kind of undead person. Maybe she was a ghost.

„Are you a ghost?”, Adam asked the girl.

„I am a witch.”

Adam gasped. He turned around to Crowley again, who had now reached the door and was pushing the small boy gently to the side, so the girl could enter.

„She is a witch! Did you hear? She said, she is a witch!”

„I heard her, Adam. Are you the babysitter?”, he turned to the girl.

„Yes.” The girl held out her hand and Crowley took it just to realise surprised, that she seemingly tried to break his fingers, maybe to intimidate him and establish herself as the alpha in this house. He raised an eyebrow high enough, that she could see it over his sunglasses.

„My name is, er, Anthony, er, yes, that is my first name. It is quite a common name, so don’t be surprised, if you meet other people with the same name, yes? What was your name again?”

„Anathema.”

„Like when you dislike something really strongly?”

„More like a formal curse by the pope.”

„I never imagined a curse by the pope to wear a shirt that welcomes me to hell. Do I have to invite you in or wash away the salt circles I put up around the house?”

„I am not a demon?”, Anathema replied confused.

„Not a demon! Not a demon!”, Adam shouted excited and jumped up and down. „Dada, I also want to make salt circles! Can I? Can I?”

„Go ask your Papa.”

„YEY!” Adam ran away to look for Aziraphale and Crowley asked Anathema inside.

„Come in. Do you want something to drink?”

„Water, please.”

Crowley lead her into the kitchenette, where fingerprints were visible on more or less every single surface.

„Adam! Did you take the squash again and forgot to wash your hands after? You know, the bottle is always sticky!”, Crowley shouted over his shoulder, while he picked out a glass for the guest and took out the water from the fridge.

„With or without sparkles? You like sparkles, right? People like that sort of thing?”

„I don’t. It dissolves little plastic particles from the bottle and you can get cancer from drinking that”, Anathema clarified.

„Really, can you?”, Crowley mumbled and turned the water into the sort ancient monks have brought down from the Himalaya and had probably healing powers.

„You can get cancer from more or less everything. It is better, if you do not eat, drink or live at all”, the girl said darkly and took the water glass.

„What a life.”

„I like hummus, though.” Anathema sat herself down on the kitchen table. „Do you know about hummus?”

„I heard of it before, yes.”

Anathema nodded knowingly and Crowley licked with his split tongue over his lips like he did sometimes, when he was lost in thought. He had lots of doubts about hiring a babysitter, but Aziraphale had told him that it was part of the experiences a growing child from the city had to make. They had to bring Adam in contact with humans, he had said like it was their only mission in life and who was the demon to argue against that. Sure, he wasn’t all too sure, if having a babysitter would actually make the Antichrist liking humans enough not to destroy earth, but it was probably worth a shot.  
Convinced had him only the argument, that now Adam had to do homework and presentations and school projects and as long as Aziraphale and Crowley had stayed on this world, they hadn’t solved that mystery yet.

Somewhere in the house a six-year-old tried to convince an angel to „borrow” him one of the old books with spells against evil in it so he could go and play „ban the witch from the sancto-thing”. It seemed as if Aziraphale was telling him then, that he could only use his beloved books to play with, if he would tear them from his cold, dead hands, whereas the Antichrist tried to do just that.

Crowley turned his head as he heard a loud shattering sound.

„Give the book back, Adam! I told you, you could play with your own books!”

The blond boy ran back into the kitchenette and tried to hide behind the chair Crowley was sitting on. A man with just as blond locks followed him after. He scanned the room with his eyes.

„Where did he go?”, he asked suspiciously, before he noticed the strange girl sitting opposite of the demon and nipping on a glass of water. „Oh, hello. And who would you be, my dear?”

„Anathema”, the girl replied.

„The babysitter”, Crowley added.

„How nice to meet you!” Aziraphale shook Anathema’s hand. „My name is, er, A. Zira Fell. You know, it is three names, not one long one, but the first letter of my first name, my middle name and my surname. You want to know my first name, too? It is Anthony.”

Anathema looked at him funny.

„I don’t have a middle name. How do I get one?”

„Just make one up!”, came a suggestion from behind Crowley. „I do that all the time! My favourite middle name is ‘disaster’ or sometimes ‘rascal’, too!”

„There you are!” Aziraphale tried to grab the boy and take the old book from him. Adam crawled under the table.

„Sometimes my first name is Fala, because my last name is Fell! You get it? Falafel?”

“He got that from somewhere else”, Aziraphale explained apologetically.

„You like hummus, you probably like falafel too”, Crowley said and reached under the table to take the book from Adam, who didn’t see it coming from both sides and shrieked as the book was wrestled out of his arms. He crawled out from under the table as Crowley handed the book back to the angel.

„No fair.”

„So, you want to be a babysitter. Do you think, you could handle him?”, Crowley asked Anathema. The girl, or rather teenager glanced at the boy, who showed her his most horrible grimaces.

„Easily.”

„We mostly wanted to employ a babysitter to help Adam with his homework. You know that stuff, right?” Crowley turned to Adam. “Go and get your homework so Anathema can see, what she has to work with.”

“Yes, Sir!”, Adam replied and dashed away. While he was away, they just waited there in silence, listening to the thump, thump, thump of a small boy, that wasn’t actually that heavy, but got a kick out of causing hearing diseases. Only a few moments later he came back and let his schoolbook fall on the table. Crowley pushed it over to Anathema, so she could have a look. She opened it, looked at the first few pages, all of them with empty spaces, where the answers had to be written in and some of the tasks marked with a pencil as a sign, that they were homework for the next day. She closed the book again and straightened up.

“Do you think, you can help him with that?”, asked Aziraphale.

“I am pretty confident I can, actually”, Anathema replied. “You know, it has been quite some time since I graduated from elementary school, but I haven’t forgotten anything, not even multiplication.”

Aziraphale looked at her. Adam put his hands and chin on the table and then rolled his head until his cheek was squished by the table.

“She is being sarcastic”, Crowley growled.

“I would never!” Anathema put a hand on her heart. Crowley huffed, threw his arms in the air and stood up.

“Whatever. As long as you can bring Adam to do his homework and not make paper planes instead. You can study here at the kitchen table. If you don’t need anything else, we will leave you to it.” With that he left the kitchenette to go and look after his plants. Winter was coming.

“Dear, do you need anything else? Like a calculator or pencils or a dictionary?”, Aziraphale asked, gesturing Adam to sit at the table. “I think Adam’s pencil case is still in the living room. I will just get it.”

Anathema got up and set on the chair next to Adam. He looked at her suspiciously.

“Now show me what you have to do for homework.”

 

-//-

 

“You didn’t have to be so impolite to the girl”, scolded Aziraphale the demon as soon as he came into sight, after the angel had climbed the staircase up to the rooftop. Crowley was crouching down in front of his flower beets or his ‘graveyard’, as he liked to call it, and examined the leaves of a plant.

“It is my style, you know that”, he replied over the shoulder and stood up to move into the impressive greenhouse right next to the flower beet. He’d been living in the bookshop for six years now and even if that was hardly any time at all in a demon’s life, it was enough to expand his garden.  
Despite the chilly autumn wind, it was humid and warm in the greenhouse and he didn’t have to worry about his cacti at all. He even convinced all the flowers to be in full bloom, even though it wasn’t their season at all. Aziraphale followed the demon inside the glass house and closed the door behind him. He sighed. It is always such a lovely view to come from the grey city inside this colourful little paradise.” His gaze fell on red lilies climbing up something like a socket. “Oh my, the lilies have almost reached the sculpture.”

Crowley looked up from a plant with blue pedestals that looked like a star.

“What sculpture?”

“The sculpture of the fighting angels.”

“Oh.” Crowley blushed. “I just thought this was a good place to put it up. After all, if I would have put it up in the book shop, there would probably have been nothing more left than dust as often as Adam crashes into things.”

“Yes.” Aziraphale sat down on a wooden bench in between tomato plants. He looked thoughtful. “He needs quite a lot of space, doesn’t he?”

Crowley started picking the weed between the tulips. He knew exactly what the angel meant. He still remembered the last birthday party, where Adam was allowed to invite all his friends from kindergarten and it sounded like a horde of elephants had stormed the building. Aziraphale had done his best to make them sit down in silence while he showed them his magic tricks, but they soon had to capitulate as six-year-olds understood quite something different under fun than two six-thousand-year-olds. They had played bank robbers and two grown ups running after them to prevent them from breaking the good cutlery they had stolen.  
Adam had asked when he would be old enough to learn to drive, so they could do some car chasing next time. Crowley had told him, that he would have to wait at least until he was 70 years old, because he wouldn’t hand over a car to someone with as much energy as the Antichrist had. Aziraphale had squinted a judgemental eye at the hypocrite, because he knew exactly about the driving style of Crowley himself.

“What do you think?”, Aziraphale asked and Crowley noticed that he had tuned out for quite some time.

“What?”

“I said, how about we go somewhere for the holidays? It might be good for Adam to get out sometime.”

„Driving away over the holidays”, Crowley repeated slowly. „Where?”

„Oh, I don’t know, how about we go skiing? It has been so long since we’ve been skiing and winters in London are always so grey and depressing.”

„Not in the last few years. Did you forget that London had more snow last year than it had in decades? We could build snowmen in the park and Adam and his friends stopped all the traffic in our street by building snow walls on both sides and throwing snow balls over the cars driving through.”

„I know. You almost had a tantrum, because you thought they damaged the Bentley.”

Crowley gritted his teeth together and mumbled something about not respecting the elderly and picked the weed with more force than before.

„Maybe you are right and we should bring the kid as far away from my car as possible during the snow.”

Aziraphale chuckled.

„Where do you want to go?”, asked Crowley.

„How about Switzerland?”

„Hm…sounds good.”

„Do you think Adam will be exited or will he be disappointed that he cannot spend the holidays with his friends?”

„Ha, he can spend every day in school with his friends. He can live without them for a few weeks.” He put the dead weed in a bucket and pulled the gloves from his hands. „Can you hand me the watering can?”

Aziraphale looked around and handed him the red watering can next to the bench. Crowley watered his plants and then looked examining around the green house. He nodded satisfied. Inside the narrow glass walls, it looked like everlasting spring. Through the glass the shadows of the cold-resistant trees were visible and made them feel like they truly were in an urban jungle. He put the watering can down and sat next to the angel on the bench. Aziraphale sighed again as he looked over the blooming flowers. He let his head sink on the demon’s shoulder and the greenhouse seemed to lay down with him.  
A few bees were humming confused over the flower petals and a big bumblebee bumped repeatedly against the closed bud of a cactus. From outside came the muffled sounds of the city and suddenly the loud noise of a boy jelling at someone:

„GIVE ME THE JELLY, YOU FOUL WITCH OR DEATH SHALL BE THINE!”

The demon and angel sighed both and got up to check on the Antichrist and his babysitter.


	16. Part 13: Deer

Adam gasped as he peeked around the tree. The deer was just standing there a few feet away from him, walking slowly through the deep snow and searching for food under the evergreens. It was so calm in the forest, he could hear the freezing air play its melody in the cold sunlight.  
As quiet as he could Adam made a step around the tree. The snow made a muffled crunching noise under his boots. The head of the deer shot up and it looked straight at him, his ears moving in alarm. Adam didn’t dare to breath. He slowly raised his arm to offer it his open hand. The deer moved his nose curiously and lifted his long, thin leg to make a step towards

“ADAM!”

Faster than the boy could see, the deer turned around and dashed away into the woods. He tried to run after it, but stopped after fighting a few steps through all this heavy snow. When the person in a long black coat, a red scarf wrapped around their neck, matching red gloves and sunglasses came stumbling unto the small clearing, where Adam was standing, the boy whined accusingly:

“You scared the deer!”

“I told you to stay where we could see you!”

Adam howled and began to jump up and down. It didn’t work so well, as he was still wearing his heavy skiing boots and almost couldn’t leave the ground.

“There you are!”, another voice said. A second person, dressed in a beige coat and a white scarf had sighted the demon and the boy and was coming towards them. He was wearing earflaps and mittens, both white as the clouds high in the sky.

“Papa, Dada made my deer run away!”

“What, my dear?”, asked the angel confused.

“NooOoOOOo! MY deer, not yours!” Then Adam let himself fall face first into the snow. Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a helpless look. Crowley shrugged. As Adam started to either scream at the snow or trying to slurp it, Crowley pulled him up by grabbing him under the arms.

“You have to be quieter”, Aziraphale told him and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to wash the snot-snow-combination from the Antichrist’s red face. “If you make too much tumult, it could cause an avalanche.”

Adam’s eyes widened.

“Really?” He sounded far to fascinated.

“That would be bad, Adam!”, Aziraphale hurried to tell him. Behind him Crowley nodded in agreement, but with a sly grin on his face. “That would be really, really bad and someone could get hurt!”, Aziraphale continued and behind him Crowley’s grin widened. Adam was almost like hypnotized by him, nodding simultaneously and not listening a bit to Aziraphale.

“Let’s play avalanche!”

“No, Adam!”

 

-//-

 

They brought Adam away from where he could cause avalanches and other natural disasters. It was for the best of… of the other vacationers in the ski area. They walked through the woods down to their hotel, where their skis were already leaning on the patio in the front, magically waiting for them even though, they had left them behind on the ski run as they had to look for the Antichrist.  
They let the skis stay there and went up to their room. The room didn’t look like something a book shop owner, who was selling like two books per year, would be able to afford. What Crowley’s profession would be, nobody knew, but he didn’t usually spend money on things.

The hotel room was large, inviting the winter sun in through large glass doors leading unto a balcony, one giant bed and a second room directly connected to this one. Before Adam could storm into the second room, he had all to himself, Aziraphale made him sit down in one of the comfortable armchairs, so he could pull the boots off his feet. There was already a spur of puddles leading from the door to the chair and they didn’t want to ruin the complete carpet.

“The television in my room plays a movie about all the people living in the hotel”, Adam told Aziraphale, while he waited for the angel to finally get those heavy boots off his feet. It was quite a struggle.

“It is the surveillance camera, dear”, huffed Aziraphale and pulled harder. With a popping sound the first boot came off. “You can see what the people in the lobby are doing.”

“Those are real people?”, Adam exclaimed excited. “So, we can spy on them?”

“Isn’t that fun?”, Crowley remarked from the giant bed he had already flopped himself unto. He had his hands folded on his stomach and his eyes closed as if he was trying to sleep. With another plop the second boot came off Adam’s foot and the Antichrist launched himself at the demon. Crowley groaned as the boy threw himself onto his stomach and tried to push their lunch back up again. He started his counterattack by tickling the son of Satan. Adam shrieked. He tried to crawl away, but was laughing too hard.

„No! Stop that! Stop that! No fair!”, he shrieked with laughter and turned to lay on his stomach. Then he pulled himself over the edge of the bed, rolled on the thick carpet and sprang up triumphantly. „Beat ya!” Then he ran into his own room. Only seconds later they heard the sound of the television being turned on.  
Crowley looked after him and then let himself fall back on the bed.

„You could have at least gotten out of your winter clothes”, Aziraphale scolded him.

„What do you mean?” Crowley lifted his head. „I am not wearing boots.” He wiggled his feet, that looked like he was wearing snake-leather-shoes.

„I meant your coat.”

Aziraphale dropped his own boots on the floor and climbed on the bed to pull at Crowley’s red scarf. The demon only lifted lazily his head.

„I can’t take of your coat, if you are lying down.”

Crowley took his sunglasses off and put them on the nightstand. He blinked slowly, first like a human, then one more time like a snake.

„You can try”, he said. Aziraphale sat on the bed and leaned over the demon to poke him in the cheek.

„You are being childish.”

Crowley raised his brows.

„Me? Being childish? I am six thousand years old.”

„Doesn’t stop you, though.”

The demon was silent for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling and the angel wondered, if he hadn’t heard him. Then Crowley replied after all:

„I just feel so melancholic sometimes.”

„What?”

„You know. Sad.”

Aziraphale just raised his eyebrow.

„What could possibly make you sad. Aren’t you happy every time you watch something horrible happen to the world? Humans being evil, selling their souls, being sinful and making war?”

Crowley smiled.

„Yeah”, he said dreamingly. „But I am sad, because it will all be over. Just think how boring it all will be once the apocalypse is upon us and there will be no more earth, no more humans to play with. It won’t only be over for them, but also for us. They won’t be able to eat sushi, we won’t be able to eat sushi. They won’t be able to listen to all the music they want, we won’t be able to… well sometimes this is already difficult, when you leave your cassettes too long in the car, but that is not the point. Queen isn’t the worst you could listen to …. but, but the point is their life will be over, because they will all be dead and our life will be over, because we will have to share our office with the boss again.”

„Which boss?”

„Doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t want to be looked over the shoulder by anyone, not God, not Satan. It just won’t be any fun anymore.”

Aziraphale hummed in agreement.

„You are right. If we fail with Adam, there won’t be much time left.”

Crowley frowned.

„Not much time left”, he repeated quietly. He looked up at the angel, who had stretched out his legs, leaning back and had propped himself up on one elbow. Despite his bickering he was still wearing his own scarf, but had gotten rid of the coat and earflaps and the mittens. „We have not much time left until we have to be adversaries again”, Crowley breathed. He then put a hand around the angel’s neck and pulled him down until their faces were close enough for their lips to touch. It was the tiniest contact, but the hand on Aziraphale’s neck burned. Aziraphale stared into those yellow eyes. He leaned in deeper.

„I am gonna spy on the weird lady with the tubes in her hair and the tiny dog, that is standing by the vending machines!”, Adam shouted and ran straight out of the hotel room.

„PUT YOUR BOOTS BACK ON!”, Aziraphale shouted after him and Crowley grimaced, because he was technically screaming into his ear. The door already closed behind the Antichrist.

„He will be fine”, Crowley told the angel. „The whole hotel has these carpet floors. He won’t catch a cold unless he goes outside.”

„What if he catches something else? The floors could be dirty!”

„He was wearing his socks.”

„But”

„Don’t worry.”

Aziraphale sighed and laid back on the bed again. He put an arm around the demon’s waist and his chin on his shoulder, so his nose nuzzled into the short, dark hair. Crowley put his hand on the angel’s and closed his eyes contently.

„I just can’t quite see”, he mumbled after a while. „how Adam should be the one causing the end of the world. I mean, as an adult, sure, but now? Or even in five years? Can you imagine him having already the same anger at the world as people at least twice his age?”

Aziraphale shook his head slightly and his nose brushed Crowley’s ear.

“There has to be some sort of trigger”, Crowley continued to ruminate. “Or do you think, he will cause the apocalypse solely, because the dukes of hell will come and tell him it is time? Just like that? ‘Boy, go and destroy the world’? You think, that’s how it will happen?”

“I can imagine him trying to destroy the world, but I cannot imagine him listening to orders. Every time I tell him to clean his room, he disappears faster than a dog seeing a cat on the other side of the street.”

Crowley chuckled.

“A dog seeing a cat, huh? Well maybe, all we have to do then is tell him to destroy the world and he won’t want to do it, just because we told him so.”

Just this moment, the handle on the door was moved, but the door had locked itself and they could hear someone hammering against the door from outside.

“PAPA! DADA! IT’S ME! YOU HAVE TO COME AND SEE ME CLIMBING THE GREEN COW!”

Aziraphale and Crowley both frowned. They untangled themselves and got up from the bed to open the door. Adam was already running down the corridor without waiting for them to follow him. Crowley grabbed his sunglasses and Aziraphale put his boots back on again. They left the hotel room and looked where Adam could have gone.

 

-//-

 

Behind the hotel was a playground for the kids and in addition to that a giant, green statue of a cow with a bell around its neck in the middle of the parking lot for the guest cars. It was at least as big as a car itself and already standing on a big bolder. The sun was shining and Aziraphale had to shield his eyes to make out the figure sitting already on the back of the cow. Adam tried to reach the bell around the cow’s neck to make it jingle.

“COME DOWN FROM THERE IN AN INSTANT, YOUNG BOY!”

Adam almost slipped and Aziraphale sprinted under the cow to catch him, if he fell.

“Don’t distract me!”, Adam shouted back as he clung to the cow’s back and continued to reach for the bell. Aziraphale threw his arms into the air.

“He isn’t even wearing his boots! You told me, he would be fine”, he pointed accusingly at Crowley. “Why the, erg, I mean, why do they even have this monstrosity?”

“People from Switzerland are crazy about cows, I heard”, Crowley replied totally unhelpful. Aziraphale started to gesticulate wildly with his hands at him.

“Help me get him down from there!”

“What should I do?”

“I don’t know! You are a demon, he is kind of a demon, can’t you summon him down here or something?”

“You think I wouldn’t have done this already, if I could?” He arched an eyebrow at the angel, who only shot him a glare, that this was not the time for discussions. “Fine”, Crowley told him, walked around a corner and as he came back only a second later, he was carrying a ladder. The angel didn’t comment on where he had found the ladder and just stood to the side as the demon placed the ladder next to the giant cow. He proceeded to climb up to the bolder and higher until his arms could reach the legs of the little boy. Adam scooted over to the neck of the cow, almost able to touch the bell. He stretched his fingers and a tender sound came from the bell.

“Have you”, the demon told him as he grabbed Adam under the arms and lifted him off the cow. From the momentum he needed to swing Adam’s other leg over the cow, he almost brought the ladder to fall and the angel hurried to get a hold of it. Adam still tried to reach the bell.

“Can I ring it?”

The demon looked at the bell and felt like this was a real balancing act, first holding the boy and at the same time not to fall off of the ladder. He sighed and shifted a little bit to bring Adam closer to the bell around the cow’s neck. Adam reached for the bell and a much louder sound emanated as he hit it with all his strength. Crowley hissed at the sound and Adam laughed. He tried to hit it one more time.

“That was enough for today”, Crowley told him hastily and started to climb the ladder back down again. Adam whined in disappointment.  
To make it up to him, that he wasn’t allowed to ring the bell one more time, they promised him that they would go and eat ice cream in the restaurant. Ice cream in winter was the perfect bait for Adam and he wriggled himself out of Crowley’s arms as soon as they reached the ground to run for the restaurant.

“Wait! We have to get your boots first!”, Aziraphale shouted and they ran after him.

 

-//-

 

They sat down on a bench outside of the restaurant, clothed in warm coats, scarfs and gloves once more, but still bristling in the cold. White sparkling snow was surrounding them and the chitter chatter of the other vacationers walking up and down the hill, on their left the forest with its high trees and occasional songs of birds.

“I have to tell my friends I climbed a cow once we get back”, Adam announced happily as he licked his ice cream and tried not to get his tongue to stick to the frost.

“Because that’s the only thing we did on our vacation in Switzerland”, Crowley said sarcastically.

“I am glad you have fun, dear”, Aziraphale said. He sat to the right side of the boy, while the demon sat to his left. Both had their own ice cream and were wondering about the strange sensation of eating something freezing outside in the snow, while still feeling it somehow burning hot on the tongue. Adam looked up and smiled.

“’tis great. Tommy from my class always boasts how often he got to fly in a plane already, now I can tell him I know all about that. Maybe I become a pilot, when I am older.”

“Maybe”, Aziraphale mused.

“We can travel more often, if you like”, Crowley told him. “Now we see the snow, next time we could see the beach.”

Adam’s eyes lit up.

“Oh yes! Could we do that next? Right after we get back home?”

“Not right after.” Crowley chuckled. “First you have to go to school again, but in your next holidays we could make another trip.”

“I don’t want to go to school!”

“Deer!”, Aziraphale shouted suddenly and looked wide eyed at them. Crowley returned a confused look.

“Yes, angel?”, he asked and Aziraphale furrowed his brows. He shook his head and pointed at something behind Crowley. The demon turned around and sure enough there was a deer standing in front of the trees of the forest, staring at them intently.

“Oh”, Crowley breathed. 

“My deer!”, Adam exclaimed excitedly.


	17. Part 14: Home

„Look, Dada!”

Crowley turned around to see Adam jump in the air and push with his feet their big suitcase down, trashing it against their second suitcase, which stood quite near to the suitcase of the travellers behind them in line and what followed was a chain reaction of falling suitcases. People tried to reach for them, but were to slow or got pulled down with them. In only a few seconds, the line behind the demon consisted of people lying on the ground, struggling to keep their suitcases up or standing confused in a sea of messed up luggage.

„Ihren Pass, bitte”, called a voice in front of Crowley and hindered him from shouting at the Antichrist. Just in this moment Aziraphale came back from buying Swiss chocolate in an expensive airport store and did it in his place.

„ADAM! BEHAVE!”

„Ihren Pass, bitte”, repeated the woman in front of Crowley and he turned to her. To his surprise she was already talking to some people, that had jumped the queue and were now shoving the demon out of the way to get to the counter as he was obviously not fast enough for them.

„How rude”, he said and stepped back.

„What?”, asked the angel and walked up to him dragging the boy by his hand.

„They just jumped the queue!”

„That won’t go”, the angel huffed and handed Adam over to Crowley. The demon took the boy’s hand and the angel walked up to the counter. He shoved the people away and put his elbows on the counter.

„Good morning, may I apologize for keeping you waiting”, he told the woman behind the counter. She glared unimpressed at him.

„Pass, bitte.”

„Oh!”, Aziraphale exclaimed. „Sie sprechen Deutsch!”, he said in a perfect German accent. Living for 6000 years sure does help to get to know other cultures and learn different languages.

„Natürlich, wir sind hier immerhin in der Schweiz”, the woman answered and the angel wondered, if a person working at an airport shouldn’t be able to speak English? Well, you cannot expect everyone to be so sophisticated, he thought to himself.

„Sollten wir dann nicht Schweizerisch sprechen?”, he asked the woman jokingly and she shot him another look.

„Das wollen Sie nicht wirklich.”

Aziraphale’s smile faltered as her tone was still cold like a popsicle and he felt like this was only a pleasant conversation from his point of view. He coughed and reached for their passports and tickets. He showed them to the woman and she looked quite sceptical at them. Adam was no problem and Aziraphale neither, but then she held up the third passport and asked:

„Sie tragen Ihre Sonnenbrille sogar auf dem Passfoto?”

Crowley and Aziraphale stared at the picture of the demon in slightly different hair, but with the same black sunglasses and a stern look. Crowley looked up at the woman and shrugged. The woman looked back at the passport, then at Crowley’s sunglasses and sighed. She waved them through.

 

„Can we now go on the plane?”

„No, we first have to check in our luggage and go through the security”, Aziraphale told the boy, who was holding on to his parents hands and tried to swing on them, while the demon and the angel tried to balance out the suitcases they had to drag after them by their free hand each.  
They checked in their luggage and went up to the security control. The security guards awaited them, but Crowley shot them one of his “convincing” looks and said nonchalantly:

“Everything alright”, as they walked straight through the security. The guards just blinked confused and continued their work with the next travellers.

“But now we get on the plane! Right?”, Adam shouted.

„First we have to go through AAAALLLLL the chocolate shops”, Crowley answered in an exhausted tone. Aziraphale notched him in the side.

„Of course! Swiss chocolate is famous, we can’t go without buying some for us and”

„And?” Crowley arched an eyebrow. They were walking down the seemingly endless aisle from the security to their gate, while passing restaurants, paper shops, shops for makeup, even shops for lingerie. Aziraphale wondered why anyone would need that kind of stuff on a plane and dragged Adam by faster. He didn’t see another shop for sweets yet, but when they reached it, they had to buy lots of chocolate for… Then he remembered, Crowley had asked him something.

„Of course, my dear. We cannot just buy chocolate for us. Don’t you remember, when Suzan and her husband made that trip to New York and brought back that little statue of liberty? Now that we are part of a parent circle, we have to do the same and bring back little souvenirs to our ‚adult’ friends.” He made air quotes, when he said „adult”.

„Why do you make air quotes?”, Crowley asked suspiciously.

„You know how”, Aziraphale began to explain, but the demon didn’t let him finish, before he interrupted him again:

„I take it back! The question should be: Why did you make air quotes around ‚adult‘, when you should have made it around ‚friends’?”

„Suzan is our friend, Crowley.”

Crowley looked like he wanted to object, but Aziraphale tilted his head to the side and looked at him in that way, where it seemed like he knew exactly, when Crowley was talking bullshit, so he gave in instead.

„Okay, maybe, but then why the plural?“, Crowley asked and they reached the waiting area before their gate. Adam let go of their hands and threw himself into the chair. He began swaying his legs and singing a song he had made up himself. It went something like „chocolate, broccolate, I don’t like broccoli” in a very high-pitched voice. Aziraphale faced the demon and continued their conversation.

„Well, first we have of course some friends under the parents of the children and then we have to …”

„Don’t say it.”

„…count the children themselves.”

„This is the most horrible thing you ever said, angel.”

„I have read a book about how good parenting involves bonding with the peers of your child to find out in a non-invasive way what the youth these days are into”, Aziraphale explained and the demon nodded at him like a disappointed husband that should know his partner well enough to not expect otherwise. He waved his arms through the air.

„What is not invasive about that?”

Aziraphale looked over his shoulder to were Adam was playing with the one toy he was allowed to take on the plane. It was a plastic dinosaur almost bigger than himself. A little girl walked over from another family and Adam was showing off his toy. He didn’t seem to listen to his parent’s conversation, so Aziraphale continued in a slightly quieter voice.

„We have to keep up with the slang of the youth. Last week or so, Adam was talking with Billy and I didn’t understand a word of it. Zing here, bang there, bum and buff and don’t ask me, I think it is those comic books. We shouldn’t have listened to Susan, when she told us, giving boys comics would make them read more. It is like a secret language. They could have an entire conversation right before our eyes and we wouldn’t know what they are talking about.”

„How is this different from when he was still using his toddler-language?”, Crowley asked back in the same low voice.

„Well, back then nobody knew what he was babbling about, but know the kids are all in on the joke and we not. We have to get in the lingo of the hip again.”

Crowley gaped at him and shook his head in disbelief.

„I don’t even know who you are anymore.” He smiled mockingly. The angel looked at Crowley with an amused face. He put his hands on the collar of the demon’s jacket.

„Children are the future, dear”, he said, smoothing out the collar of the jacket. Crowley chuckled and looked over to Adam, who was debating with the girl about how the dinosaur should kill the doll she had with her. She told him they could behead her and offered the doll to Adam, who curiously tried it out and pulled the round head off the doll with a loud „pop”. They looked with amazement into the whole in the dolls head, then went on trying if they could fit their whole hand inside her head.

„This child for sure”, Crowley said amused. He then turned around and pressed a hasty kiss to Aziraphale’s lips. The angel looked at him in surprise.

„Not in public, dear!”

„Why not? We’re in Switzerland. They are very neutral what concerns most stuff.”

The angel patted the demon’s cheek to hide his embarrassment and went over to Adam. He asked him, if they wanted to go for look for some sweets, while Crowley watched his dinosaur. They boy cheered and pushed the dinosaur into the demon’s hand, then dragged the angel by the hand into a store that was over and over decorated with the Swiss flag, red hearts and pictures of the Edelweiß flower. Crowley looked after them, then sat down on the chair. The girl with the beheaded doll was still sitting on the chair next to him and looked up at him quizzically.

“What?”, he asked her.

“Du siehst komisch aus.”

The demon stuck his tongue out at her and she started giggling. Then she climbed out of the chair and ran back to her family. An announcement through the speakers informed him, that their flight would be ten minutes to one hour late.

 

-//-

 

„Finally, home again”, Aziraphale huffed as he carried the suitcase through the door of the book shop and just let everything stand in the entry way in favour of controlling, if his books were still all there.

„Papa, don’t leave your stuff on the floor!”, Adam called after him and dropped on his bottom to pull his shoes off.

„Har-har”, Aziraphale shouted back sarcastically. „Don’t get so smug with your parents, you little rascal.”

Crowley entered after them pulling in the second suitcase and closed the door. He took the shoes Adam had left behind as he ran into his room up from the floor and then carried the suitcase after him into the boy’s room. They hadn’t really needed to bring a lot of luggage themselves as Crowley just manifested his clothes and as much Aziraphale felt guilty about something like that, he was really weak to the demon’s good arguments and the practical side of it. Therefore, almost the complete suitcase was filled with the boy’s clothes and toys. The second suitcase was really just there for the souvenirs.

Adam was sitting in front of his bed on the carpet that looked like a slayed green monster and was reading in his comics. Crowley glanced at the comic. Something weird about a guy looking like a bat and jumping down from rooftops. The demon was slightly worried that literature like this would bring Adam closer to hell and had tried to sneak in a few books about more colourful guys in tights fighting crime. He read them beforehand to make sure nobody was jumping from rooftops or was doing drugs.  
He opened the suitcase and started taking out Adam’s clothes to put them either in the „washing machine” or back into the drawer. The doorbell rang.

„I go!”, Adam yelled and jumped up from the floor.

„Don’t open the door alone!”, Crowley shouted and followed after him. Adam was faster than him and opened the door. After one look at the person on the other side of the door, he threw his head back and shouted:

„There’s a man with a moustache!”

„Tell him, I don’t want to buy it.” Crowley came to the door and looked the man up and down himself. The man with the moustache waved vaguely at him. He was wearing a poncho.

„I don’t sell moustaches”, he told Crowley. Crowley narrowed his eyes behind his sunglasses and nodded slowly.

„Good”, he said, though the poncho was telling something else. The man waved.

„I am Greg.”

Crowley stared at him.

„Gregory?”, the man tried again, but Crowley just shook his head slightly. „Susan’s husband?”, the man tried. Crowley thought about it. He had heard that name before. „I am Billy’s father. You asked Susan to water your plants while you were on vacation and I helped her sometimes.”

„You touched my plants?”, Crowley snapped. Greg recoiled.

„No, no, I swear, I just touched the watering can and watered them, I didn’t touch them at all, I promise!”

Crowley inspected his sincerity and then smoothed his face out again to calm himself down. He put a hand on Adam’s head, who was still standing next to him.

„Well, then thank you. I will inspect the flowers as soon as I am finished with unpacking and give you report, if I found the flowers in the same condition as I left them.”

Greg looked a little paler than before. Crowley waited for him to go away, but as he didn’t, he asked:

„Is there something else?”

Greg looked startled. He started searching in his pockets and finally stretched his hand out for the demon to do the same. He let a key fall into Crowley’s hand.

„Susan told me to bring the key back, when we saw you get back from the airport.”

„Ah, thank you.” Crowley put it away.

„How was the vacation? Where have you been again?”

„Switzerland.”

„Ah, how nice. They have all that mountains and snow and weird clocks, right?”

„Kuckucksuhren.”

“What?”

“That’s what they call their clocks.”

“Sounds… weird.”

The demon blinked at him. He asked himself how much longer this conversation would go on, before he could go back to his stuff again. The man, Greg as Crowley remembered, fidgeted with his hands and swayed a little on his feet. He seemed like there was more on his chest, but Crowley was way too impatient for that. Just as he wanted to tell the man to go away, Greg opened his mouth again:

„Susan and I would also like to go to vacation again, but you know… money.” He scrunched his face up. „How could you afford this? I have never actually seen you selling a book.”

Crowley nodded.

„That’s just the ang- er, the, my hus, I mean Aziraphale’s business.”

„Oh! So, you have your own job! Where do you work at?”

„Yes”, Crowley said like he tried to slice cheese with his teeth. He didn’t add anything more and Greg just stared at him for a few seconds, getting more insecure the more time passed. He coughed.

„So…”, Greg began, then his face lightened up. He seemed to remember something. „About your greenhouse.”

„Yes?” Crowley furrowed his brow. Adam was slipping away from under his hand to run back inside and into his room. The demon envied him to be able to just run away from boring conversations with mortals.

„I took Billy up there!”, Greg continued in a weirdly offended way. “You could have warned me about”

„WHAT? You brought a child up there?”, Crowley interrupted him.

„Well, yes, I”

„He could have destroyed something!” Crowley considered to just run up immediately and check on his plants. Greg looked confused.

„Oh, that is what you are concerned about?”

„Of course!”, Crowley replied. “What were you talking about?”

„About the statue of course!” Greg waved vaguely up to the rooftop as, if the object he was talking about was flying somewhere over his head. Crowley squinted at him, which Greg obviously couldn’t see.

„What statue?”

„That statue of… you know… the two angels.” He made a crude gesture with his hands. Crowley gasped.

„Excuse you?”, he exclaimed. Greg wanted to say something, but Crowley suddenly heard the angel approaching and he panicked. He slammed the door shut.

„Who is it, oh!”, Aziraphale called as he entered the book shop. He looked at the demon standing in front of the closed door. “I thought, you were talking to someone on the door.”

„No, no, nobody”, the demon lied like the serpent he was and stood in front of the door as if to cover it. Aziraphale looked at him quizzically. Crowley licked over his lips. The angel tilted his head to the side.

„Are all your books alright?”, Crowley asked to distract him from the door.

„Oh yes, thank you for asking. All the same, all the same.”

„Good.”

Silence fell between them.

„You want to sit down and drink some Swiss wine and eat Swiss chocolate?”, Aziraphale asked and took the suitcase that was still standing next to the door and contained all of their souvenirs.

„Oh god, yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation of the German parts:
> 
> "Passport, please", called a voice in front of Crowley.... in this scene they were just talking with the staff of the airport and when Aziraphale realized she only spoke German, he asked:  
> "Oh, you speak German!"  
> "Of course, we are in Switzerland after all", she replied, to which he joked:  
> "Shouldn't we speak 'Schweizerisch' then?" (because that's the dialect a lot of people in Switzerland speak, but not many other people can understand it, not even Germans XD), so she told him:  
> "You don't really want that."
> 
> Then she looked at the passports and asked Crowley:  
> "You even wear your sunglasses on the picture in your passport?"
> 
> Later, when Crowley was sitting next to the little girl, she told him:  
> "You look weird."
> 
>  
> 
> I don't know how well this bilingual experiment worked, so please let me know how understandable it was and if I should have done it different! ^^


	18. Part 15: Spelling mistakes

“Don’t forget your lunch box”, Aziraphale told Adam as the two of them hurried from the parking lot to the big and grey school building. The boy turned around, took the lunch box with pirates on it from the angel’s hands and continued to run to his classroom. The angel followed him.

The school bell had long rung and everything was silent, all the children were inside their classrooms and no teacher in sight. The janitor was carrying a ladder around to change some light bulbs.  
Adam ran to the wardrobe in front of his classroom, where all the elementary school kids had to leave their shoes and jackets. He let his lunch box fall down and it landed on the bench with a loud bang. Just a few meters next to him, it got quiet behind the door of the classroom.  
The door was opened and a little boy with dark locks looked out on the corridor.

“ADAM!”, he shouted and then turned his head over his shoulder. “Miss, Adam is here!”

“Hi, Billy”, Adam greeted the boy. He could hear the sound of heels clacking over the floor and the door was opened further. A woman in a long skirt and glasses on her long nose looked at Adam and then behind him at the angel.

“You are late for school.”

“Sorry, Miss”, Adam told her and pulled his boots of his feet.

“The holidays are over, you realized that?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Why did you get late to school?”, she asked with her hands on her hips, but looked at Aziraphale instead of the boy.

“My dads overslept”, Adam told her and slipped behind her into the classroom. She stared after him, then whipped her head around to glare at Aziraphale. The angel laughed embarrassed.

“My apologies… late flight”, he mumbled and the teacher tapped her shoe impatiently on the floor. She held her chin high.

“I expect adults that believed themselves to be capable of planning far enough ahead to become parents, to also be able to plan their holidays in a way that doesn’t disturb their child’s school lessons.”

Aziraphale blushed and scratched his neck, keeping his mouth shut about the fact, that they had already arrived back from the holiday a few days ago and hadn’t overslept because of a late flight, but because Adam had begged them to let him stay up late to watch an action movie appropriate for his age. Unfortunately, “appropriately for Adam’s age” had meant, that his parents were about 5993 years too old for it and had decided to get drunk to get through the movie instead of letting Adam watch the movie alone, because that would have been irresponsible of them.  
They had fallen asleep on the couch half way through the movie and had only woken up late in the morning, when Adam had tucked at their clothes and then jumped on them as they still haven’t woken up. Adam had jumped directly on Crowley’s back, who had fallen off the couch and startled the angel, who had laid under the demon, confused about what the heaven was going on and continuing to marvel his hangover away to get a clear head. Crowley had done the same and they had hurried to get Adam’s school supplies and into the car.

Aziraphale’s mind came back to the teacher standing before him, still staring him into the ground and he laughed again in embarrassment.

“My apologies”, he repeated.

“I hope it won’t happen again”, the woman said coldly and nodded shortly at him as if in acknowledgement that at least it wasn’t Adam’s fault and went back into her classroom. Immediately the chatting, that had started as the classroom wasn’t under the attention of a teacher, quieted down and Aziraphale sighed in relief. He turned around and left the school building.

Crowley was still sitting in his car, his elbow out of the window and rubbed his forehead. He only reacted as the angel sat beside him in the passenger seat.

“How did it go?”, the demon asked with gritted teeth.

“This was so embarrassing. We can never get drunk again.”

“Agreed”, Crowley groaned and let his head sink on the stirring wheel. For a while they just sat there in silence listening to the tumult inside and outside their heads.

“Have you gotten sober?”, Aziraphale asked, because the demon looked really horrible. His skin was rather grey and it looked almost like he was about to shed it. The angel sympathetically put a hand on his back.

“Yeah, but I still feel like something is screwing my brain tighter and tighter.” He massaged his forehead. “Maybe we should get drunk again.”

The angel smacked him over the head. The demon growled in pain.

“That’s a horrible idea. We have to be sober to pick Adam up from school.”

“But only in a few hours.”

“We are not getting drunk again.”

“Fine.” Crowley didn’t seem happy with it, but started the car anyway. He pulled out of the parking lot and they drove back to the book store. Freddie Mercury was singing about how the show must go on and Crowley really didn’t feel it. His mood got darker and darker as suddenly Freddie spoke up

“CROWLEY. YOU HAVE AN APPOINTMENT.”

and Crowley almost hit a bus waiting at a bus stop. He pulled around the vehicle and shouted:

“DUCK!”

“Where?”, Aziraphale asked, but seemed to understand in the same moment, that the demon wanted him to duck. He tried to sink deeper into the passenger seat, but realized how ridiculous that was, because he couldn’t just hide from the radio and the radio fortunately couldn’t see him. So instead he just stared at the demon in confused shock.

“WHAT?”, Satan asked in the voice of Freddie Mercury.

“Nothing!”, Crowley replied hastily. “I was just, there, I mean, there was a duck on the road, nasty birds, I head to run it over.”

The angel stared with more spite at him than before. Crowley grimaced and had his eyes locked desperately to the street, while he listened to the silence coming from the radio. Eventually Satan seemed to sigh, then repeated:

“YOU HAVE AN APPOINTMENT.”

“With whom?”, Crowley asked irritated.

“IT HAS NOW BEEN OVER EIGHT YEARS SINCE THE ANTICHRIST WAS BROUGHT ONTO THE EARTH AND I EXPECT YOU TO PAY HIM ANOTHER VISIT TO MAKE REPORT ABOUT HIS WELLBEING.”

“Oh, of course! I will drive immediately to the Cultural Attachés mansion and see how your son is holding up!” In only a few moments Crowley had sobered up more than he had thought possible and was now floating in a kind of shallow feeling of security, almost drunken recklessness. A little voice in his head and an angel that was warningly shaking his head at him told him he should better be quiet, but… “Anything in particular you wish to be informed about? Maybe if he is already killing ants with a magnifying glass or if he is a bully in school? Oh no, I reckon he is home-schooled… but maybe he is bullying his teachers and the cleaning staff!”

“INFORM ME ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

“Everything?”

“EVERYTHING.”

“Even like… small things? Like if he isn’t eating his vegetables? Because I would gladly tell you, if the Antichrist doesn’t like broccoli, but that would probably take some longer observations and not just a short visit. I would have to stay there and watch him over a few days and if you don’t want to wait so long of your report, you”

“JUST TELL ME IF HE IS WELL.”

“Oh, sure.” Crowley hesitated. This conversation had been going on for longer than their drive home and they had already passed their book shop twice, so he had been driving around the block for the last minutes. In front of him appeared a red traffic light and he didn’t feel motivated enough to change it to green so, the Bentley came to a hold and he stared at the back of the car before him. “I will make sure your son is alright”, he added.

“GOOD. DO NOT CONTACT ME. I WILL CONTACT YOU the show must go on…”, Queen continued the phone call and Crowley turned his head to stare at the angel beside him.

“Is Satan worried about his son or am I worried about his son?”

 

-//-

 

“I want you to write ten sentences about your holiday. Use the words I wrote on the blackboard. Eric, would you please read them out loud?” The teacher looked in the general direction of the twins, not completely sure which one of the two was Eric and which was Aaron. Both were looking down on their table and tried to avoid her eyes. “Eric?”, she repeated and one of the boys looked up to squint at the words on the blackboard.

“Snow, tree, game, family, present, Chris-chrim-“

“Christmas”, the teacher helped him.

“Christmas, angle”

“Angel”, she corrected him.

“angel, church, food, trip”, the boy that was possibly Eric finished.

“Very good, Eric. Now I want you to use at least five of these ten words for your story about your winter holidays. If you do not celebrate Christmas with your family, you can use the words ‘snow’, ‘family’, ‘food’, ‘trip’ and ‘game’. You do not have to write about everything that happened in your holiday, just something you had fun with or liked.”

The classroom filled with the rustling sounds of twenty children searching for their pencils and notebooks. Adam chewed on his pencil in deep concentration before starting to write with a bright mood. He wrote down a few words, then stopped again, squinted at the blackboard and then whispered to Alexandra, who was sitting beside him.

“What’s Christmas?”

Alexandra looked up and stared at him surprised.

“You don’t know what Christmas is?”, she whispered back at him in disbelief. Adam shook his head. Alexandra chewed on her pencil and then put it aside. “Christmas is the best thing besides birthdays! You get a ton of presents and great food and all your relatives have to play with you and all you have to do is sing something for them and go to church. That part sucks and also that I have to wear a dress, but I get to stay up all night and sleep with my cousins on the floor, because we have not enough beds and, in the morning, Jesus was there and we can open our presents.”

“Who is Jesus?”

Alexandra blinked at him.

“Some weird baby with wings. He was born in a stable or something with donkeys and cows.”

“Oooh”, Adam said as if he understood now. “That Jesus. I thought you meant someone else. Why is he bringing you presents?”

“Because it is his birthday.”

Adam rubbed his chin in confusion.

“But then shouldn’t you give him presents?”

Before Alexandra could reply the teacher warned them to be quiet and go back to work. Adam looked down at his paper again, his face scrunched up in concentration. Alexandra put her hand up and the teacher asked her, if she had a question.

“Why is Jesus bringing me presents, if it is his birthday?”, she asked. The teacher looked exhausted and had to take a deep breath before answering, which the twins took advantage of.

“Jesus doesn’t bring the presents, it is Santa Clause!”, one of them shouted and jumped up from his chair.

“Liar!”, Billy called. “It is true Jesus! He writes me a letter every year and I find it under the tree, that he wanted to drop by himself and meet me, but had to meet his dad, because Christmas-time is family-time!”

“That’s true!”, a girl with glasses agreed. “I always have two Christmases, one with my dad and one with my mom.”

A few of the other kids looked at her in envious bewilderment. It was clear on their faces that they imagined what great fun it would be to celebrate Christmas or other joyful events like their birthdays more than once a year or even every day. There truly couldn’t be a downside to getting presents and sweets every single day of the year, just maybe that they had to wear fine dresses and sing Christmas carols to their grandparents.

“This is a topic for another subject”, the teacher told the children to calm them down again. “On Thursday you can ask Sister Loquacious about Jesus, but not now. You must know not everybody celebrates Christmas.”

“You don’t have Christmas, Miss?”, Eric exclaimed in disbelief. The teacher slowly shook her head.

“I do not believe in God and therefore, I do not celebrate Christmas.”

It was quiet in the classroom. After a while, Billy asked:

“What has God to do with presents?”

 

-//-

 

“Where is Dada?”, Adam asked as he came down the stairs in front of the school building to greet the angel, who was picking him up from school. Aziraphale hugged the boy and then took his backpack so Adam wouldn’t have to carry it all the way home.

“He had to run some errands and will be back in the evening”, he told Adam and took his hand. “How was your school day?”

“Way too long! I miss the holidays!”

Aziraphale chuckled.

“How long until the next holiday?”, Adam asked hopefully.

“Still a few months, I fear.”

Adam whined dramatically like a single day in school was the worst he could think of. They walked through the snow back to the book shop and stopped on their way at a bakery to buy Adam a croissant and hot cocoa and Aziraphale a croissant and hot tea.

“Like Christmas”, Adam mused as he bit into his croissants and remembered the things, he had learned about Christmas today in school. Even if a croissant didn’t count as a present it for sure was great food. Aziraphale looked at him curiously.

“What?”

“Oh!”, Adam exclaimed as he remembered something else. “Papa, did I tell you, I am an Atheist?”

“What?”, the angel asked with a bit more urgency behind it.

“I wanted to be something else, but the word was too complicated, so I just decided on being an Atheist. I had to write the word down on my hand to not forget it.” He pulled his glove from his hand and showed Aziraphale a dark smudge on the back on his hand, that looked like ‘a tea ast’. “Alexandra helped me spell it.”

“I can help you spell it too”, Aziraphale offered, not sure what more he could do in this situation, but improve at least the Antichrist’s spelling, even if he couldn’t prevent him from losing his faith in the good and evil of heaven and hell. Adam shook his head.

“No. It is fine like this.”

 

-//-

 

“I had a grate holliday. my dads and I made a trib to swiferland. their was a lot of snow. ther was also a lot of trees. I saw a dear. my dads got angry, because I climped on a big caw. the cow was verry big. but I have no chrismas. my dad bougt a lot of food in swiferland and drinks. I like food.”

The teacher read Adam’s story and corrected the spelling mistakes. She was often a little disappointed to teach the youngest children and never get to read any good stories, but on the other hand, puzzling a picture about her pupils’ life out of their poor writing possibilities, was quite fun sometimes.  
She read again over the short text to list the words she had to practice again with her pupils. She smiled as she discovered some of the more amusing mistakes and asked herself what Adam could have meant instead.


	19. Part 16: Palisades and snow walls

Crowley was standing suspiciously in front of the high palisade of the Cultural Attaché’s mansion with his hands in his pockets and was looking into the garden, where a small child was beating a plush animal that was impossible to identify anymore. The boy was pushing plastic soldiers inside the holes where the plush ears were torn off and cotton was lying all over the grass. It weirdly reminded Crowley off those plush bears that were empty inside and children used them as backpacks. The boy was tying the toy up with a rope and maybe he was really trying to make a teddy bear backpack. Crowley frowned.

“What kind of parents don’t buy their child a teddy bear backpack”, he muttered and then focused on the adults entering the garden. It couldn’t be the boy’s parents as they were wearing aprons and started tending to the boy. They took the tortured toy from him and told him to come inside and eat his lunch. The boy. Warlock. The false Antichrist. He had straight brown hair and the demon half conscious thought about the fact that he was also a false son of a Cultural Attaché but instead some child from a him unknown family. A family that really had drawn the short straw in giving birth in exactly the same hospital and at exactly the same day as the family that hell had chosen as the Antichrists host family.  
Crowley sighed and watched how Warlock started shouting and kicking with his legs as they tried to get him inside. He didn’t want to each lunch, he wanted to keep playing and threw plastic soldiers at his servants.

Crowley walked away from the fence to his car and thought how the plan from his side had been a good one, expect for the mistake to misplace the baby. No demons had so far been involved in the boy’s upbringing. They had just left him there and in a few years, he would unquestioningly choose hell in the war to end the world. No persuasion would be needed, no promises with the devil, just a child and two parents that never had time to play with him.

Crowley got into his car and drove back home.

 

-//-

 

“Welcome home again, my dear!”, the angel greeted him as he came back and kissed him on the cheek. The demon hugged him fiercely in return. He nuzzled his nose into the crook of the angel’s neck. Aziraphale patted him on the back, then draw back enough to give him a serious look. “We have to talk with Adam.”

“About what?”, Crowley asked in surprise.

“It is a tragedy”, Aziraphale told him mysteriously and let go of the demon to lead him into the kitchenette. Again, there was a pile of papers and Crowley groaned at the thought of more excursions they had to allow Adam to go to with his school class. Those letters were always so ominous. “Meet at 8 in school. We will leave in time and everyone late will be left behind”, the letters had told him before and then he had showed up with Adam in appropriate clothing and a backpack full of snacks, second shirts, trousers and sun blocker in case he spilled something on himself or the sun came out behind the clouds after all. They had been there at least ten minutes early and he had been forced to chat with Beatrice, the only mother that was always early, while the rest of the parents arrived. The teacher had been there right on time and then they had had to wait for another twenty minutes, because Billy and his parents had overslept of were stuck in the traffic somewhere. Then they had left school and Crowley had been forced to accompany them, because one teacher couldn’t be trusted with twenty children and it had started raining and instead of going to the zoo, they had gone back to the school and watched a documentary about giraffes. Crowley just didn’t understand who the people that wrote the information sheets about the excursions were trying to fuck about.

“Are we going to the zoo again?”, he asked as they walked up to the table. “Because I don’t know, if we have anymore sun blocker left and I would have to restock.”

“No, no, we do not go to the zoo again and also it is winter.”

Crowley shrugged.

“The sun shines all year and they always write in on the list of things to bring.”

Aziraphale glared at him and searched the pile for a special paper.

“This is not about the zoo”, he told the demon and folded a paper up to examine it. It seemed to be the wrong one and he put it back down. Crowley walked to the cupboard to take out two mugs and made himself and the angel some hot tea. Aziraphale and Adam had eaten lunch without him and he could hear the boy playing in his room.

“I am glad”, he continued. “The last time we went there and Adam got lost and then the speakers announced they would start feeding the crocodiles, a monkey stole my sunglasses as I tried to get there in time.”

Aziraphale huffed without looking up from the papers.

“I didn’t tell you to take a shortcut through every preserve, I just told you to hurry before our son would be eaten by crocodiles.” He held up another paper and his eyes lit up as he had found what he was looking for. He put one hand on his hip and turned around to the demon, that was pouring hot water into the mugs.

“I panicked, okay?”, he retreated while pouring the tea, staring at the mug, then at Aziraphale and back at the mug. He frowned. “I didn’t even think that far until you made me worried and I just wanted to see if he was alright.”

“Don’t try to make this my fault. You got your sunglasses back, didn’t you?”

“Well yes, but do you know how embarrassing it was to first climb over the fence to walk through this totally unsuspicious looking lawn just to be attacked by a giant furry wrestler?” Crowley handed one of the mugs to Aziraphale and sat down on a chair with his own. “And if this wasn’t humiliating enough, I had to go back once I found Adam to get my sunglasses and challenge the ape. People were laughing at me.”

Aziraphale raised his mug to hide his smile behind it.

“Really? I didn’t notice.”

“You didn’t notice? Of course not! I saw exactly how engrossed you were in this ice cream of yours. But I can’t expect you to worry about my reputation, if your ice cream is about to drop on the floor, now can I?”

Aziraphale sniggered and sat down on the other side of the table. He handed the demon the paper he had been looking for. Crowley put his sunglasses down on the table and read the paper. He raised his eyebrows.

“An invitation?”

“Yes.”

“For a home-made summer camp in the countryside by…” He glanced down at the signature. “Dean and Pam? Who are Dean and Pam?”

“The twin’s parents.”

“What twins?”

“Eric and Aaron.”

Crowley stared at him blankly. The angel shot him an irritated look and put his mug down.

“Really Crowley, you may fuzz over the boy all you want, but when it comes to the people around him you have a shorter memory than a goldfish. Eric and Aaron are in Adam’s class and two of his best friends. Their parents seem to have a house or a cottage of some sort somewhere in the countryside and are inviting some of their children’s friends to spend the summer with them. It sounds way fancier than it is, really. It seems their plan is to make us bring our own tent and all and… camp in their garden while being allowed to use their bathroom and kitchen to lead at least in some way a civilized life.” While he told all this to Crowley, the face of the demon had become more and more of a grimace that suited a creature of hell way better than his usual features.

“Is this some sort of try to recreate hell on earth?”, he tried. Aziraphale just shrugged with wide eyes and sighed exaggerated. He didn’t answer anything more.

“We won’t actually accept, will we?”, Crowley asked worriedly.

“To be honest I have already played with the thought to send Adam to some sort of camp over the summer as it seems like a necessary experience for young boys. I knew you wouldn’t be happy about being separated from him. Therefore, this would be a compromise.”

Crowley groaned and let his head sink on the table.

“Don’t be dramatic, dear.”

Crowley thought his future over contemplating what would be worse. Accompanying his adoptive son for one or two weeks on a camping trip surrounded by other eight-year-olds or leaving out crucial experiences of his childhood and risking the end of the world. The angel’s eyes widened and he suddenly jumped up from his chair.

“Ah! I almost forgot!”

Crowley lifted his head of the table and stared with yellow eyes at him.

“What?”

“Adam told me he wants to be an atheist.”

“He wants what to be what now?” Crowley shot up from his seat. He glared at the hallway that lead to Adam’s room, but before he had decided on what he would do, Aziraphale told him to calm down and that they would better ask Adam to come and sit with them at the table to talk this nonsense out of him. Crowley had agreed and Aziraphale had asked him to make another tea as he would go and get Adam.

 

-//-

 

“Can I have another biscuit?”, Adam asked and already reached for the box Aziraphale was just putting away. The angel held the box out once more and let Adam take another biscuit.

“Of course, dear.”

Adam put the whole biscuit in his mouth and looked at them both like a frog that had a stick or something stuck in his mouth. He grinned happily.

“Look, Adam”, Crowley began with a serious tone. He stopped as the boy started to chew and had to open his mouth in the progress, because the biscuit was just too big. Crumbs were falling all over the table and Crowley could see the gooey biscuit dough being smashed between the Antichrists teeth. He shuddered. Then he had lost his point.

“Dear”, Aziraphale brought him back from his thoughts. “You wanted to tell Adam something.”

“Right. Look, Adam. You cannot be an atheist.”

“Hy ot?”, Adam asked with a full mouth.

“Because…” Crowley thought about it. He didn’t think telling an eight-year-old, that he was adopted and actually the son of Satan was the right way to approach the topic. “…atheists like math”, he finished lamely. Adam looked scandalized.

“Wot!?”, he cried out and sprayed pre-digested biscuit over the table.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full”, Aziraphale lectured him. Adam swallowed.

“But math is so stupid!”

“Yes”, Crowley told him in earnest. “Now you see why you cannot be an atheist.”

Adam looked disgruntled down at the table.

“Stupid math-people destroying everything fun”, he mumbled. Crowley just nodded solemnly. Adam seemed to mule this over in his head while chewing on the inside of his cheek. He then looked up and asked:

“Why don’t we celebrate Christmas?”

“Uh”, Crowley stammered.

“Because Aaron told me that Christmas is the religion, where you read the bible and go to church and we do never go to church, but Papa has many bibles. I’ve seen them. They are old and horribly long and the letters are this tiny.” He put his index-finger and his thumb together to demonstrate just how small the letters are.

“Well…”, Crowley began.

“So, if we have bibles, why don’t we have Christmas?”, Adam wondered and looked at his parents quizzingly.

“You see, Adam”, Aziraphale started. “A lot of people have religions, because their parents had them, but they never actually do anything with it.”

Adam stared at him.

“Like when I was over at Alexandra’s and her mother had this old rocking horse and all the dolls and little soldiers from her parents, but we weren’t allowed play with them even though they were toys?”

Aziraphale blinked. He tilted his head to the side and opened his mouth to say something, but all he could come up was:

“…not exactly?”

Adam started pouting and Aziraphale thought he looked so cute, he offered him another biscuit. Adam took one reluctantly, but still looked very disgruntled.

“It should be against the law to have toys and not play with them. I don’t think it’s fair having religions where you get presents and trees in the living room and you are not allowed to use them, just because they are old.”

Aziraphale and Crowley shot a look at each other, before Aziraphale made the boy an offer.

“I am sure many people with bibles do not go to church and we do not celebrate Christmas, but if you want to celebrate Christmas, then we can do that next year.”

“Really?”, Adam asked excitedly. “Can we have a tree and presents and gingerbread and Christmas carols and candles and Jesus and Santa Clause?”

“Yes, we can have all that”, Aziraphale told Adam. The boy got really excited and the two of them just smiled at him hoping he wouldn’t find out for a while that it was only January and it would still take almost a whole year to be Christmas again. Luckily, before Adam could come to that realization, the door bell rang. Adam whipped his head around and jumped off his chair.

“I’m gonna open the door!”

“Wait, Adam!”

Adam had already reached the front door and opened it. A small boy in a yellow coat, a too big bobcap and a long scarf stood before him. Billy jumped excitingly up and down and high fived the Antichrist.

“Emma and Alexandra are building snow walls and we are playing snow knights! Do you want to play?”

“Yeah! Just wait for me!”, Adam told him already pulling his own coat over his arms and putting his cap on not bothering closing the zipper of his coat. He wanted to run after Billy, but Aziraphale stopped him.

“Adam! You forgot your boots! You are going to catch a cold!”

 

-//-

 

“Oh, grace princess can thou see the big growling monster coming to destroy our kingdom?”

Alexandra looked down from her observation tower, that was a rather snow-covered mailbox. She shielded her eyes with a gloved hand and glanced over the empty street. It was snowing a little. Parking cars, trash cans and traffic signs were covered in white. Suddenly she pointed out her hand at something in the distance and shouted:

“The great metal dragon is coming to destroy us all, oh grace knight of the snow table!”

Adam was cowering behind the snow wall they had built as a protection of their kingdom and looked at Billy sitting beside him.

“Wizard, give me thy magic snow weapon.”

“Bring us victory”, Billy retorted in earnest and grabbed as many snow balls from the pile, they had prepared, as he could keep in his hands. He handed them to Adam, who handed them over to Emma sitting on his other side.

“Great witch, grace of the snow, give me your magic so I can defeat the big metal dragon.”

She swept up some of the powderier snow from on top of the snow that was already lying on the streets for a couple of weeks and had gotten quite hard. She sprinkled the snow over the snow balls and nodded at Adam. He nodded back, then handed a few of the snowballs back to Billy.

“The dragon!”, Alexandra shouted from the observation tower. Adam pressed himself against the snow wall with the snow balls in his arms. He took a deep breath. On the other side of the snow wall a rattling noise had gotten louder as if it was getting closer. Something was approaching.

“TO VICTORY!”, Adam suddenly shouted and he and Billy and Emma jumped up. They turned around to throw the snow balls as hard as they could over the wall. The slowly approaching car had stopped right in front of the snow wall they had built in the middle of the narrow backstreet and a man with a thick beard leaned out of the car window.

“What the hell?!”, he shouted and pressed the horn of the car.

“Thou will never defeat our snow wall!”, Emma shouted at the driver and threw another snow ball that flew alarmingly close by the man’s face. He looked after the flying snow ball, then he whipped his head back around and got another one right on his nose.

“OI!”, he shouted and turned off the engine. “Where are your parents, you little devils? You cannot just block the street like that!”

“I can do anything!”, Adam shouted bravely. “I am knight Adam of the snow table!”

“Yeah, pisser!”, Alexandra shouted. “This is our street!” The man tore the door of the car open and knight Adam and his entourage ran off screeching. They most certainly would have to hear something about appropriate language later, but right now they had to escape the great monster from within the metal dragon.


	20. Part 17: Goth or not Goth

“Math is stupid.”

Anathema looked at Adam unimpressed. He was lying with his head on the table or more accurately on his school book. The half “8” she told him to copy from his text book and now looked more like a deformed “0” showed a presentation of defeat.

“I just don’t have any power in me anymore”, Adam mumbled and lifted his head a tiny bit to grab his pencil and demonstrate his tutor how his fingers trembled too much to even hold the pencil properly. “Look, I can’t even hold the pencil anymore.”

Anathema raised her eyebrows and looked at the drawings of dinosaurs next to the deformed “8”, that seemed to tell the contrary.

“Math is not stupid. It is maybe boring and difficult, but not stupid.”

“You just want me to say the solution, because you don’t know it yourself”, Adam attempted to manipulate her. „Why don’t you tell me what”, He glanced down at his work sheet. „twelve and zero is?”

“Eight”, Anathema corrected him and absentmindedly played with the ring on her finger. It had a big silver skull on it and was quite heavy, so she was taking it off and on again. Adam attempted to write it down as a solution with a sly grin like he had tricked Anathema. She hastily leaned forward and covered the page with her hand.

“I meant it is twelve and eight, not a zero. You have to find the solution yourself.”

“It is a zero!”

“No, you wrote zero, but it is an eight, just look at your book.”

“Why do all this numbers look alike?”, Adam exclaimed and put his hands under the book to throw it in the air. If fell on the floor and took his pencil case with it.

“You still have to do your homework”, Anathema told him unimpressed.

“But my friends will come soon to play with me!”, Adam whined.

“Then better hurry and pick the things up you threw off the table.” Anathema crossed her arms over her chest and Adam groaned.

“Do you do sacrifices to Satan?”, Adam asked distracted and got up from the table to pick up his school utensils. He prolonged the process by first opening his pencil case and spreading out all his pencils over the floor in the kitchenette. Almost as slow as a tortoise he crawled under the table and pretended to reach for his scissors.

“Math is not that difficult. You don’t have to make a bargain with the devil to do your homework”, Anathema replied and lifted her feet as Adam pretended to find a ruler under her shoe. Little did she know she had just given the boy another excellent idea. “Sit back down at the table. You only need one pencil and your book.”

Adam grumbled something, but got back on his chair.

“Twelve and zero”, he thought aloud.

“Eight.”

 

-//-

 

“Thank you for coming today”, Aziraphale told Anathema as he brought her to the door and handed her the money for the tutoring.

“You are welcome. By the way, did you per chance see my ring somewhere?”

“Ring?” Aziraphale hesitated in the doorframe.

“I think I had my skull ring with me, when I came, but later I couldn’t find it anymore.”

“I am sure I didn’t see it anywhere.”

“Hm. Anyway, I probably just forgot it at home.”

Aziraphale smiled at her apologetically.

“That could be true. Anyhow, I will tell you immediately, if the ring is found”, he assured her.

“Thanks. Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

As soon as he had closed the door behind the girl, Aziraphale turned around and shouted into the shop:

“ADAM! Did you steal Anathema’s ring?”

He received no answer. Grumbling he put on a disgruntled face and marched through the shop to look for the boy himself.  
Adam wasn’t in his room as the angel discovered by slamming the door open in the intention of catching him right in the act of doing something suspicious with a suspicious unknown ring, that had magically found its way into his possession.  
The room was empty apart from countless toys laying on the floor as well as clothes, school books and things that looked like Adam had dragged them in from the park. While cursing the boy in the appropriate vocabulary for an angel, Aziraphale started picking up toys and folding shirts to put them in the drawer or carry them to the washing machine in the bath room. There he found the demon. He was sitting ON the running washing machine browsing through a magazine about toy cars.

“What are you doing?”, Aziraphale asked exasperated.

The demon looked up from the magazine. He was slightly trembling from the vibrations of the washing machine. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses and the lids of his snake eyes blinked.

„They don’t have a toy Bentley, but a toy Beetle, what kind of collection is this?”

„Why are you sitting on the washing machine?”

Crowley hesitated. The washing machine growled.

“I like sitting here?” It sounded like a question. Aziraphale sighed and put the dirty clothes into the basket.

“I am looking for Adam. Have you seen him?”

“Doesn’t he have his tutoring lesson with this weird goth girl.”

“She is not a goth.”

“Is too.”

“Is not. She is a nice young girl and she already left. I think Adam stole her ring, that’s why I am looking for him.”

“What kind of ring?”

The angel tried to remember and his memory was filled with images of rings that had skulls, snakes or goat-horns on them. He wasn’t too sure, which one Anathema had worn today, but he always inspected them, when he would innocently offer to make her tea. He and Crowley had their Agreement, but still he sometimes suspected the demon had chosen Anathema as a tutor to lead Adam into worshipping demonic cults and such.

“Some kind of dark ring with silver and black and something dead on it”, he hastily came to a compromise between the rings he had seen. Crowley snorted.

“I told you. Goth.”

“Why are you so nonchalant about this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t goth good for you? Aren’t goth people all worshippers of Satan?”

Crowley shot him a look.

“And everybody that celebrates Christmas is a bible-saint. Wearing the colour black doesn’t make you a demon.”

Aziraphale looked the red-green-tartan pullover over, that Crowley was wearing and that hung a little bit big from his shoulders. He questioned if stealing Aziraphale’s clothes would make the demon more holy in a way, turn the fall back, bring him back to heaven or something. Even though Aziraphale had to admit that tartan, even if it looked rather stylish and trendy, was not the first clothing he imagined, when he thought about heaven’s wear.

“I think he gets the stealing from you.”

“Naturally”, Crowley replied without looking up. He had returned to reading the magazine or more exactly looking at the pictures of child models playing with toys and weirdly happy looking families playing in the garden or chasing each other around. The washing machine under him stopped shaking and instead started peeping.

“Put the laundry up, will you, dear?”, Aziraphale told him and left the bathroom to keep looking for their son.

 

-//-

 

“Are we allowed to be up here?”, Billy asked unsure and glanced around in the green house. “My dad took me up here when he was watering the plants and said I should never come up here again.”

“Yeah, Dada also doesn’t want me to play up here”, Adam agreed, but made no attempt to leave. He put his backpack down between the flowerpots and started unpacking.

“But it’s brilliant here”, Alexandra told him and looking all the different plants up and down. “Like a very small jungle and with all the snow outside!”

The heat inside the greenhouse was indeed steaming up the glass walls and they almost couldn’t see the soft snowing outside, because the walls were white anyway. Bees were flying around relishing the infinite summer and Adam and his friends had to be careful not to step on the little beetles and ants running around, building their little houses and going on with life like it was just a myth nature needed the break of winter to flourish properly.

“What are we doing now?”, Emma asked and sat down beside Adam. She was the one-year-older sister of Alexandra and a year above them in school. Alexandra and Billy directed their attention back on the leader of their group. Adam didn’t look up, but kept emptying his backpack. Next to a pack of white chalk, an old book, candles and a lighter, a ring with a skull on it appeared on the stone floor in the green house.  
Finally, Adam put the empty backpack aside and presented the things to his friends.

“We’re gonna make a demonic sacrifice today.”

Billy gasped.

“Really, Adam? A sacrifice for the devil?”

Adam nodded.

“I have all we need.”

“That’s gonna be fun!”, Emma exclaimed and clapped her hands together. “What can we do, Adam?”

“You can put down the circle and the stars.” He handed her the white chalk. “Look. It has to look like this.” He opened the old book and searched for the page he put one of his socks in between to find it easier. He found the page, threw the sock aside and pointed at the illustrations of demonic circles. “Like this.”

Emma nodded and took the book.

“Where should we make the sacrifice?”, Alexandra asked. Adam knitted his forehead and looked around. Suddenly, he spotted the perfect place to make their sacrifice. “There!”, he said and pointed at the stone statue with the two “fighting” angels.

 

-//-

 

Crowley was taking out the clothes from the washing machine and putting them into a basket to carry them outside the back door. Even though the green house was not that big, it still held enough space that he was able to put up a clothes line. The wet clothes dried way faster in the damp heat of the green house than anywhere in the book shop and it was alright for Aziraphale as well, as he always feared the wet clothes would make the books mouldy.  
Without bothering to put on a jacket, Crowley climbed up the spiral staircase to the rooftop and opened the glass door to the greenhouse.

“Don’t move, Billy! We cannot sacrifice you, if your feet go over the line! You have to stay inside the circle!”

Crowley knitted his forehead.

“What the heaven”, he mumbled suspiciously. He couldn’t see anything but green leaves and some flower petals yet. He had to walk around the big flowerpots to get to the area, where they had put up the bench to sit and eat and sometimes even read a book. Very cautiously he tiptoed around the plants and glanced at the scene in front of him.

They had tied Billy with a water hose to the socket of the stone statue. Circles and stars were drawn on the floor with white chalk and they had lit some of the tiny candle lights Aziraphale sometimes put up, when they had a late dinner at home.  
While Adam was reading out of a book in a weird language, that sounded a lot like horrible mispronounced Latin out of the diaries of some old roman senator, two girls Crowley couldn’t remember having seen before were dancing around the circles like they had stepped at a sharp stone or something.  
While the demon stared at the scene before him, Adam stopped actually reading the words from the book and just formed noises that vaguely sounded like they could be Latin and stood up. He picked a piece of chalk up and wanted to draw something else on the floor as Crowley put soundly the basket with laundry down and asked:

“What the heaven is going on?”

Four tiny heads whipped around and stared at him with wide eyes. Crowley stepped between the children and took the chalk out of Adam’s hand. He looked at it, then held it up and said:

“We don’t sacrifice our friends, Adam.”

“Adam?”, they suddenly heard Aziraphale ask. They all turned around to the plants that were covering the door of the green house. The door was shut and the angel stepped out from behind the potted plants. His eyes widened in surprise. His gaze rushed from the tied-up Billy to the statue, to the awkwardly standing around Emma and Alexandra, to Adam – Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed – to Crowley, who was still standing next to the “demonic” circles with a piece of chalk in his hand.  
Aziraphale crossed his arms before his chest and glared at Crowley.

“You are teaching him Satanic rituals?”, he exclaimed incredulously.

“What?”, Crowley cried, although it sounded a lot more like “WOT?”

“I can’t believe you!” Now Aziraphale formed his hands to fists, put them on his hips and kind of… took them off and relaxed them again. He decided to use his arms to point at something. He chose the statue. “And you showed them the statue?!”

Crowley’s eyes went there and back between the angel and the statue.

“It’s just fighting angels!”

Aziraphale huffed.

“’Fighting’”, he said while making quotation marks with his fingers. “And don’t change the topic. I can’t believe you violated the Agreement like that!”

“I would never”, Crowley started.

“And what is this?”, Aziraphale interrupted him and pointed again at the scene. The children were all quiet and stared at them in scared confusion.

“How am I supposed to know?”

Aziraphale looked like he wanted to say something, but instead walked up to Billy and untied the hose. He pulled him to his feet and then took Adam’s hand.

“Come, Adam. Let’s go down and play with something else. You too, Emma, Alexandra and Billy. Come one, I will make you some tea.” He shooed the children out of the green house to go back into the book store and then turned around to glare once more at Crowley. “And you better clean this up, before someone else can see it!” He then disappeared around the plants and Crowley heard the door shut again. He stared into the empty space looking lost.

The circles and stars on the floor looked a lot more like the night sky with a few planets than something to summon a demon and someone even added a few shooting stars and a rocket.

“Did he really believe I drew this?”, he asked the empty green house. Hesitant he just waved his hand once and the drawings were gone. He picked up the hose and put it back over the hook on the wall. When he stepped on the clear space where the drawings had been to leave the green house, he suddenly heard a cracking noise. He stopped and lifted his foot. A ring laid on the floor in little broken pieces that looked like parts of a silvery skull. Crowley blessed.


	21. Part 18: Talks and Counselling

“Have you considered marriage counselling?”, Susan asked while stirring her spoon in her cup of tea. She sat down on the armrest of the couch rather than putting away all the toys that occupied the majority of the couch. Aziraphale had just taken a sip from his tea and while now experiencing a coughing fit, he wasn’t sure if he should either spit the tea out again or just choke on it and die.  
Sadly, the death of his mortal form wouldn’t solve any of his problems.

“What?”, he asked after coughing into his napkin. After the incident with the demonic sacrifice he had deliberately ignored Crowley and thrown him glances colder than the pole caps, before telling him he would go with Adam alone to their dinner with Billy’s parents. Crowley had told him that that was just fine with him since he had other plans anyway and they had continued to ignore each other, while throwing curious looks, if the other one was looking.  
Most of the times they both were.

A lot of head snapping and huffing and hurried turning away had been involved.  
Adam had looked quite worried.

“Marriage counselling. I mean, sure, I know there are rather negative connotations with that, but I assure you there is no shame in getting help from a third person”, Susan continued.

“I am not sure I can follow.”

“I am talking about the possibility of you and Anthony seeing a therapist.”

Aziraphale blinked.

“But we are not married.”

“Why not?”, a little voice asked and Susan and the angel turned around in surprise. Adam was standing behind them in the doorway, Billy next to him.

“What?”, Aziraphale asked again, this time a little bit more alarmed.

“Can we have some biscuits?”, Billy asked and Adam leaped onto that thought.

“Oh yeah! The good ones, please!”

They both shot hungry glances at the plate Susan had put on the table. She leaned forward to pick the plate up and offer the boys some biscuits.

“But only a few or you will spoil your appetite.”

“Fnks, mum”, Billy said with an already full mouth. He and Adam both grabbed a hand full of biscuits and then disappeared again into Billy’s room. Susan held the plate out for Aziraphale to take some biscuits too.

“Biscuits?”

“Just one.”

Susan put the plate back on the table and the room was filled with awkward chewing noises. Aziraphale looked at the pictures on the wall. They were with only one exception, that was the picture of an elephant with an orange hat, drawings of a small child. Thrown by that pattern Aziraphale tried to figure out if the elephant also was drawn by Billy or if it was actually art.

“They are just cheap copies if you are wondering. I don’t really like them, but at least I could put up one picture I like.”

“I am sorry?”, Aziraphale asked, hoping she hadn’t just trusted him with the knowledge she hated the drawings of her son.

“Picasso, you know. Think it really isn’t much talent behind his painting style. A man that is famous for coining a new art style, that focusses on showing all the ankles of the object in the painting, sure had a one-dimensional mind. Once, I went to the museum with Greg and wanted to look at nice art, but he kept showing me almost completely empty sheets of paper or white plates that had nothing but a few scribbles or a tiny flower on them and I was furious how something like that could take the place away from actual art, just because a man with a famous name had made them. I mean, my son is drawing better!” She pointed at a few of the pictures that looked like the art of a small child. Aziraphale followed her finger. She pointed at a few other pictures, that apparently weren’t from her son.

“You don’t like Picasso?”, Aziraphale asked.

“No, but Greg does, so I put my elephant up.”

Aziraphale looked at the elephant and began to nod slowly.

“It is a nice elephant.”

“It is, isn’t it?” They both stared a while at the painting, then Susan let out a small sigh and Aziraphale turned to look at her again. She leaned a little towards him and told him in a whisper:

“Between the both of us. Every few weeks I take one of the Picassos down and replace them with drawings by Billy. I don’t think Greg noticed yet. Even more so, because Billy had to grow up with these pictures and he tends to imitate them. So, the pictures are actually the copies of copies.”

Aziraphale just smiled and nodded at her.

“That is… nice?”

Susan also started nodding and put a biscuit in her mouth. She scrunched her forehead up and stared intently at the angel. Unsure he took another sip of his tea.

“Is it problems in the bedroom?”

Aziraphale died on the spot.

 

After Susan had handed him a new napkin, he had secretly cleaned his shirt off the tea spots with only a little shame felt about the un-angelic attitude towards stains. Now he was trying to use the napkin to hide his embarrassment behind it.

“So?”, Susan probed him once more.

“There is not-, we do not-, I rather not talk about it.”

Susan didn’t reply anything, but looked a little disappointed. She took another biscuit and eventually moved on to another topic.

“So, what is the problem then? Just that he was playing with the kids without including you?”

“No, yes, partially.” Aziraphale looked torn. Susan offered him another biscuit and he took it. “It is the fact, that they were playing…. ‘his’ game.”

“His game? Do you have our own game?”

“Kind of.”

“And Adam likes Anthony’s game better than yours?”

“Well no, Crowley and I decided to not play any of these games with him at all, but only… ‘Adam’s’ games.”

Susan looked confused.

“Is this about tiny soldiers one of you is painting and putting up in the cellar and Adam was playing with them even though he wasn’t allowed to?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth and held his hands out, but didn’t really know how to respond to that. Susan put another biscuit in his open hand without saying anything. “No, not like that. Er…maybe the word ‘game’ is a little confusing. Let’s call it ‘religion’. We don’t want Adam to grow up with any of our ‘religions’, because he should decide on his own as we both do not agree on each other’s ‘religion’.”

“I see…” Susan nodded in a slightly hypnotised way. “Is Anthony part of a sect?”

Aziraphale debated that interpretation.

“No…. Not really.”

“Okay… so he broke that promise and showed Adam and his friends some of his religious practices? When was that? I thought Billy said they were making a Satanic Ritual.”

“Er… well – what?”

“Billy told me about how Adam came up with the idea to make a Satanic Sacrifice, because he had found a ring with a skull on it and they used one of the old books from your shop. Where they doing religious stuff before or after that?”

“The ring”, Adam exclaimed and mentally slapped himself. He stared wide eyed at Susan and tried to come up with words he could say through his open-hanging mouth. “Children, right? Making Satanic Sacrifices like it is nothing. I will never understand the kinds of plays they come up with.”

“Right?”, Susan chuckled.

 

-//-

 

“Are your parents married?”, Adam asked, before shoving another biscuit into his mouth. Billy chewed hard, before answering.

“Yeah”, he said, spraying crumbs all over the bed sheets and grabbing for the next biscuit. He realized that he just had eaten the last one and grimaced in disappointment. Adam also chewed looking like a chipmunk.

“Why?”, he asked, after he had finally swallowed.

“So, they can be gross and snog all the time”, Billy crunched his nose up.

“Eww”, Adam agreed. He looked around in Billy’s room. “Wanna read some comics?”

“Yeah! I got a new one with a wolf-guy!”

“Cool!”

 

-//-

 

It was quiet inside the greenhouse. Outside there was a shattering sound followed by some hissed cursing… or more precisely “blessing”. The door of the greenhouse was slammed open and the steam of the hot and damp air rushed outside and directly in the face of a surprised demon. Crowley was holding on to the door handle and more or less hanging in the doorway, while the hot air warmed his face, steamed up his glasses and made him close his eyes.

“Uuh no, not this shit”, he mumbled and entered the greenhouse. More stumbling than walking he only gave the door an unmotivated push and it didn’t close accurately. He slouched around the potted plants and then swayed slightly on his feed staring at the empty spot in front of the stone statue. He lifted the arm he held an almost empty bottle in to his face and took a long sip.

“Tastes so dry”, he muttered and then glared at the empty spot on the floor. A bumblebee was resting on the warm stone ground. “All’s your fault.”

The floor didn’t reply.

“S’ your fault I had to drink the whole bottle”, Crowley accused the tiles.

The tiles had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Could’ve shared with the angel, but nooooooooo”, Crowley exclaimed and slouched down on the little bench. He took another sip from the bottle, not irritated in the slightest that it should long be empty. As he put it down again there was still a little bit of liquid splashing around in the bottom of the bottle. Crowley licked his lip and tried to remember why he had started drinking in the first place.

“Cause of stupid circles and stars and rockets and stars.”

It didn’t sound like a good reason, even to Crowley.

“Maybe I just felt like it!”, he told the tiles and already felt a lot better. The formerly empty pit in his stomach hiccupped in agreement.

“Just wish the angel d’get drunk with me.”

 

-//-

 

Aziraphale closed the door behind him and Adam and decided to put Adam to bed first and then find the demon and tell him that he wasn’t upset anymore. They had eaten dinner with Greg, Susan and Billy and just come back from their visit. Aziraphale made Adam brush his teeth and get in his pyjamas.

“Good night, Adam”, he told the boy as he put him into bed. He kissed him on the forehead and went to turn off the lights.

“Good night, papa. Where is dada?”, Adam whispered.

“Probably asleep somewhere.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Aziraphale turned off the lights and closed the door behind him. Then he stood in the hallway and sighted. He just hoped he would find out WHERE exactly the demon had curled himself up to rest. He didn’t find him in the bedroom, not in the living room, not in the kitchenette, not in the shop, not on or inside the washing machine, he even walked outside to check the Bentley on the street, but it was empty. The frosty winter air was brushing around his nose and he looked up to the night sky. It wasn’t snowing, but a soft wind was whirling snowflakes from the rooftops and made them fly through the darkness.

“Maybe he’s in the greenhouse”, Aziraphale mused, clouds appearing as he spoke.

 

-//-

 

The door to the greenhouse was open, which was both unusual and alarming. Cautiously, Aziraphale opened the door further and walked around the potted plants in the almost completely dark green house. A dim light was coming from the centre, where they had put up some lanterns to even sit in here when it was already too late for daylight.

“Crowley?”, Aziraphale asked and was making his way to the bench. Someone was lying on it, propping himself up, when he heard the angel enter and blinking at him with glowing yellow eyes. Aziraphale let out a breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding in. „Oh good, it is you.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

The demon propped himself up fully on one arm and lifted the other to wave at the angel.

“Hiii”, he sang. “Wann’a sip?”

Aziraphale stared at the demon in disbelief.

“You are drunk!”, he stated incredulous.

“Nooooo”, Crowley replied. “Noooo, only a little warm, can get sober anytime.”

“Then do it!”

“Don’t wanna.”

Aziraphale’s mouth turned into a thin line. He put his hands on his waist and glared at the demon.

“You are impossible.”

Crowley didn’t replay, just let his head fall back and lied back down on the bench, his one arm hanging down, the other draped over the backrest. Aziraphale stared at him and then sighed. The limp form reminded him weirdly of their days back in paradise with Crowley hanging from the branches of trees in his snake form. He hardly ever saw that these days. He walked over to the bench and leaned over the demon’s head.

“Make room for me”, he told him and shoved at Crowley’s shoulders. As the demon only groaned and didn’t move, he put his hands under the demon’s head, cradling it and lifting it up. He carefully sat on the bench and put the head back down in his lap. The lantern was standing on the floor in front of the statue, shining dimly and throwing dancing shadows at the dark walls.  
Aziraphale stroked with one hand over the black hair on the demon’s head and Crowley muttered a few sleepy words. The angel’s eyes wandered over the place and landed on the almost empty bottle in the demon’s hand. He tilted his head to the side and then sighed again.

“You were drinking without me!” He realized he sounded more hurt, than he had intended to. “Anyway, I wanted to apologise for assuming things. I probably should have known you wouldn’t just violate the Agreement like that.” He looked down at the snoring demon. He leaned back and relaxed a little more on the bench. Caressing the demon’s hair, he told him:

“Next time let’s get drunk together again.”


	22. Part 19: The rest of us

“Oh my god, Anathema, what have you done to your hair?”

As her mother stared at her in horror, Anathema just stood there in the hallway and started to cry. Big, wet tears rolled from her eyes and down her reddened cheeks and her mother rushed to hug her. After nearly crushing the girl for a few moments, she held her on armlength to inspect the mayhem that was Anathema’s hair. It looked like she had a quarrel with a lawn mower. It was short and messy on top and almost shaved to the skin on both sides of her head.

“What happened? Why did you do that to yourself?”, her mother asked.

“How would I have done that to myself? Do I have a razor?”, Anathema cried.

“Then what happened?”

Anathema covered her face in the long sleeve of her jacket and sniffled a little.

“Those mean girls from school”, she mumbled and her mother looked at her in heartbroken sympathy.

“Oh honey, are you being bullied?”

Anathema just nodded.

“Oh honey”, her mother said at a loss of words. She helplessly looked around, then hugged Anathema again and asked her if she would like a cup of tea. Anathema shook her head.

“No, I wanted to meet Jasmin in a minute to study together. I just came home to ask you if you had a hat for me.”

“Of course!” Her mother hugged her one more time and then hurried to look for her hats. She told Anathema to follow her and made her look at a variety of hats from giant sun hats out of straw to fedoras and baseball caps. In the end Anathema went for the black fedora hat, that was a little bit too big for her and covered not only her hair, but also her forehead and tried to slip over her eyebrows.  
“Are you sure you want this one?”, her mother asked.

“Why not? Haven’t you worn this hat when you were younger?” Anathema stood in front of the tall mirror behind the door of her mother’s bedroom and turned to see how the hat looked from all sides. She really enjoyed the way the dark colours of her clothes and hair clashed with her pale skin. It made her look like the witch she was and also suggested the ability to turn into a bat or a crow whenever no one was looking, that she might or might not have.

“Well yes, but I chose to wear some nice dress to it. It is a rather masculine hat, you know. Don’t you want to look like a beautiful young lady?”

“Not really”, Anathema replied and hastily added: “I mean, it is just a hat and a dress is just a dress, all just fabric. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a gender, does it?”

Her mother looked unconvinced, but let a little smile appear on her lips. She put her hands on both of Anathema’s shoulders and looked into the mirror with her.

“Of course, Annie. Wear whatever you feel comfortable in. You still look beautiful.”

“Thanks, mum.”

After Anathema had assured her mother that she didn’t care all that much about the short hair and no, she wouldn’t have to come to school and talk with her teachers, she could handle her classmates quite well, thank you, Anathema put her jacked and boots on again and left the flat to meet her friend.  
The dark-skinned girl was leaning outside the building and pushed herself away from the wall, when Anathema came hopping down the stairs.

“How did it go?”, Jasmin asked as Anathema threw an arm around her shoulder and they started walking down the sidewalk.

“She bought it.” Anathema grinned.

“Really?”, Jasmin exclaimed in disbelieve. “My mother would have never bought it or at least demanded I tell her the names of the guilty so she could beat them to hell for touching my hair! Nice hat by the way.”

“I told you.”

“You feel bad?”

Anathema shrugged. Truth be told, she felt a little bad for lying to her mother about being bullied. What had really happened was, that she had saved the money she had earned with tutoring to get a new haircut. Since she knew her mother would have never allowed her to deliberately cut her hair that short, she had come up with this lie and had built it up over the last days by telling her mother every few days about the mean girls that were apparently bullying her. They were, of course, completely made up.

„It’s better, if she believes I am bullied in school than she starting bullying me about my hair again. It was difficult enough to get the hairdresser to cut it like that.” Anathema rolled her eyes and imitated the hairdresser in a high and squeaky voice: “dO YoU rEAlLy wAnt YoUR HaIR thAt sHoRT? It wILL looK uGLy lIkE tHat. YoU wOn’T fINd a BoYFrIenD.”

Jasmin snorted.

“Yeah, adults are crazy protective about girl’s hair. It’s a little like that with my brother too, when he wanted to grow his hair out, but not that bad. My mum just thought he looked like we couldn’t afford to send him to get a haircut and made him cut it short.”

Anathema nodded darkly.

“I really hate that obsession other people have with a girl’s hair. It’s just hair for fucks sake and it doesn’t have to tell potential admirers, if I am available or too young to court or already taken and I don’t want anybody pulling at it or talking about how intimate it is to braid someone’s hair. Just leave me all alone.”

“Alright, alright”, Jasmin told her and held her hands up in surrender. “I hear you.”

Anathema smiled at her.

“Didn’t mean you though.”

Jasmin grinned at her then stuck her tongue out. Anathema squealed and tried to get away from her. They reached the building Jasmin lived in and got inside. With only a short stop in the kitchen to each get a glass of water they barricaded themselves in Jasmin’s room. Her room was small and cramped, but had a plush pink carpet, that covered the tiny bit of floor between bed, wardrobe and desk.

“So…biology”, Jasmin started as Anathema flopped onto her bed. The lean and stringy girl groaned into the pillow.

“I swear, all I know about biology is that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”

Jasmin sat on the carpet and started pulling out her school books.

“Well clearly you already know all there is to know about that subject”, she retorted sarcastically and reached for another folder. She put it in her lap and started going throw the countless pages and notes. Her face fell as she tried to read some scribbly writing that was underlined three times. “Ugh, we still have to do our maths homework.”

Anathema looked up from the bed.

“That I can do”, she said and crawled to the edge of the bed. She reached for her backpack and pulled her own math book out. “That reminds me of the boy I am giving tutoring lessons in math. He is a horrible little bugger.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”, Jasmin laughed. 

“He is always throwing his stuff and spilling it all over the floor, when he doesn’t want to study anymore and we are doing really easy stuff like two plus eighteen. He gets frustrated really easily and also bored. He’s just getting on my nerves.”

“You really seem to hate children, you know? I don’t know why you put up with them.”

“How do you think did I pay the hairdresser? Mum for sure wouldn’t give me money to cut all my beautiful hair and lose my girlyness.”

Jasmin was silent for a while, just humming into her school books. She wrote the date on a fresh page and started to copy a few numbers from the book. They worked in silence, before she spoke up again:

“Mum thinks you’re a punk.”

Anathema looked up from her math book and chewed on her pencil. She stared at the posters that covered the walls and showed pictures of boybands, some of them dark with lightnings and skulls on them without any guys that might be hot or not. Anathema found rather not.

“Maybe I am”, Anathema mused. “I sure like heavy boots.”

“Then you’re probably not a hippy”, Jasmin replied.

Anathema chewed on her pencil.

“My mum thinks I am having puberty problems. To be honest, I would prefer her thinking I am going through a serious emotional trauma or something.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate adults looking at me and being like ‘well she can’t help it, it is all the changes her body is going through’, while it is really me being able to finally just be me for the first time.”

“Is this again about the book?”

Anathema sighed and turned to lie on her back. She pulled the math book out from under her and let it fall onto her stomach. She let her head hang from the bed and looked at Jasmin from upside down.

“Not just. I mean, The Book, yes. It has already been a few years since I didn’t have to live after it anymore, but I haven’t really understood everything back then. I read the book again a few weeks ago and it is horrible, just horrible, all the things written in there.”

Jasmin looked at her in concerned fear.

“Horrible, how?”

“Like…”, Anathema hesitated and picked a piece of lint off the bed. She rolled it between her fingers. “My whole life was written in there, all about me, school, jobs and what I would do in my private life and then… er, well really private stuff and then I would just die… very early.”

“The book says you will die soon?” Jasmin made big eyes at her.

“Yeah…when I am like 20 or something.”

Jasmin stared at her in horror. She put the book in her lap aside and got on her knees to crawl over to the bed. Anathema rolled around, sat up and made space for her friend to sit beside her. The pale girl looked already huddled up like a breeding penguin in a snow storm and Jasmin offered her a pillow to hold onto. She leaned then against the wall and stretched her legs out.  
They were both the same age and to die only in a few years wasn’t a thought she wanted to dwell on, because all the reasons someone could die that young were things that “only happened to someone else” and never to the person themselves or someone they were very close to. Jasmin stared at Anathema intently, because she just had to know, now that Anathema had started with the topic.

“How?”

Anathema kneaded the pillow absentmindedly.

“Well, er… it is not just me… I, er, I have never really told anybody about this, but The Book says the world will end then and just everything will be destroyed.”

Jasmin’s wide eyes narrowed and her mouth flatlined.

“The world will end. When we are like 20 or something”, she deadpanned. She let out a small laugh, but there was no humour behind it as if she was unsure if Anathema was joking or if she really believed in the things that were written in The Book. “How will it end?”

“I am not completely sure.” Anathema shrugged. “It is not easy to interpret. I just know it has something to do with the Antichrist.”

Jasmin seemed to contemplate this.

“Oh, so this is a Christian apocalypse?”

“Yeah…” Anathema furrowed her brows.

“Well, no need to worry then. This will only be a problem for the believers, the rest of us is safe. I thought this was about actual threats like natural catastrophes, earthquakes or volcanos or even mutated beavers of the size of whales that crawl out of the ocean and destroy civilization as we know it.” Jasmin waved her hands in the air. Now it was Anathema’s turn to stare at her in disbelieve. Then laughter destroyed Jasmin’s perfectly serious face and Anathema snorted.

“You are ridiculous.”

“Oh, I am ridiculous? I wasn’t so sure there for a second. Glad, we sorted it out.”

Anathema threw the pillow at her. Jasmin managed to catch it, but only laughed harder and Anathema tried to calm her down by rubbing her back and offering her a glass of water, which Jasmin almost snorted over the plush carpet. Anathema then was shaking with silent laughter, thumping with her hand on the bed, because she couldn’t get the image of Jasmin spattering water through her nostrils out of her head.

“Oh, enough now”, Jasmin told her while rubbing her reddening nose. She sat back down with her back against the bed and pulled the book into her lap. “Better tell me if you have the solution for our math homework yet.”

“Only if you help me study for biology.”

“Sure.”

They studied in silence, comparing their answers, arguing with their calculators until Anathema got bored and asked to see the new book Jasmin had bought. She handed it her and while Anathema was reading, Jasmin’s mind wandered back to their earlier conversation.

“What private stuff?”

“Huh?” Anathema looked up from the book.

“What private stuff did this book say about your life?”

“Oh.” Anathema shrugged and stared at the wall. “Well…” She blushed. “Stuff about me having relations with a young man.”

Instead of a response Jasmin just threw her head back and laughed out loud. She didn’t even stop, when Anathema started throwing pillows at her again. She just dodged them with one arm and kept laughing until it transformed into this soundless wheezing, that tore on her stomach and made it ache.

“It is not that funny”, Anathema told her, after Jasmin could breathe again.

“No, it’s not. It is hilarious.”

Another stuffed animal flew by her head.

“Oh, come on, Ann, you gotta admit this book sounds pretty ridiculous. Like some funfair attraction, a fortune teller or something that tells you about the love of you life, a handsome young man, whose hair is something between blond and black and has most likely two eyes and a face.”

“What kind of description is that?”, Anathema demanded with pink cheeks over the embarrassment, that her mother had indeed made her visit countless fortune tellers, after The Book hadn’t told the right future anymore.

“Exactly what a fortune teller would tell you to make sure he is always right. Anyway, if that was his intention or the book’s intention it failed miserably.”

“Why do you say that?”

Jasmin threw one of the pillows lying on the carpet back at her.

“Because you don’t even like blokes, of course!”

“Why would I”, Anathema snorted. “Honestly, I just don’t see the appeal.”

“See? No need to worry. The book was wrong and the world’s not going to end. You saved us all with your queerness. The world is thy cell and thou art the mitochondria, oh saviour Anathema.”

“No need to be so sarcastic.”


	23. Part 20: A little bit more fluff

“This is nice.”

Aziraphale smiled at the demon over the table. The lights in the room were dimmed and a single candle flickered between them. Silent music was playing and the fact that it was for once really Beethoven and not Freddy Mercury was refreshing and calmed the angel’s heart. Crowley raised his glass to make a toast and Aziraphale did the same. The glasses tinkled quietly. The angel sighed and took a sip of his sparkling wine.

“I think I honestly didn’t appreciate these quiet dinners with you the first couple of thousand years on earth. It took us to become parents to really know what we had in our days as childless bachelors”, Aziraphale said. Crowley took a spoon of his soup and nodded at the angel with closed eyes as he enjoyed the taste.

“I can only agree with you, angel.”

Crowley smiled back at Aziraphale. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses and his yellow eyes glowed in the candlelight. His left hand was lying next to the cutlery and Aziraphale reached over the table to put his own hand over the demon’s. Without hesitation Crowley turned his hand to intertwine their fingers.

“I wanted this to be an apology for misjudging you last week”, the angel said in a low voice. “I should have never even thought you would just break The Agreement like that.”

“It’s alright, angel. You were distracted with all the worries about Adam and”

“Still, I should have trusted you more.”

Crowley might have wanted to retort something, but instead just looked the angel in the eyes. For a while they just looked at each other as if they were captured in a conversation only consisting of their eyes and the soft feeling of the demon’s thumb brushing over the back of the angel’s hand. The air was filled with the scent of delicious food, the salt of the bread sticks in a basket on the table and warmth of the room. The calming music in the back changed to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and a third person exclaimed:

“That’s my favourite old music! Sounds like a herd of knights attacking their enemies!”

Crowley and Aziraphale turned to look at the boy sitting with them at the table. Adam was happily tearing bread sticks apart and sprinkling them over his soup. He tried to sing with the music, which proved to be difficult since there were no lyrics and the noises Adam made indeed sounded a lot like a horrible fight scene.

“It is not a herd of knights, but an army, my dear”, Aziraphale corrected him. They were sitting at the table in the kitchenette, the main course was still in the stove to keep it warm and the radio played Wagner. They had originally planned to go out to a fancy restaurant, but Billy had come down with the flu and they couldn’t ask Susan to watch Adam, so they had just stayed at home and cooked their own “fancy” dinner.  
Adam broke the last piece of the bread in his hand and started stirring in the bowl with his spoon. He looked at the soaked pieces of bread in the tomato soup and made a face.

“Eww, it’s all gooey now.”

“Adam, don’t put bread in your soup, if you don’t want to eat it”, Aziraphale scolded him.

“I didn’t know it would happen so fast!”

“This is white bread it absorbs the soup faster than rye bread and also you took your time to throw all that bread in. If you want to eat the bread in the soup, put only one piece at a time in.”

“Can I have a new soup and try again?”

“No.”

“But I don’t want to eat this gooey bread!”

“Okay, I tell you what, you little disaster. I exchange my soup with you and you are careful with your bread now, yes?”, Crowley offered and detangled his fingers from Aziraphale’s to take Adam’s bowl and hand him his own.

“I’ll be careful”, Adam promised and reached for another bread stick. With a cautious look at his parents he tore only one piece off and put it in his soup. He then hastily put the stick aside and ate that one piece of bread under the eagle eyes of his parents.

“What kind of soup is this?”, Adam asked.

“Tomato soup.”

“I like the soup with the letters better.”

“I know, dear, but today we wanted to make something nice for ourselves. Tomorrow you can have your letter-soup again”, Aziraphale promised him. Adam nodded and shovelled more soup into his mouth. He stared into the emptiness, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, when his eyes caught the candle in front of him. His face lit up.

“Look, what Emma showed me!”, he shouted and shot his hand out to hold his finger over the flame.

“Adam!” Crowley grabbed the boy’s hand, before he could burn himself and put the light out with two fingers. He stared at the boy without letting go of his hand. “Adam”, he repeated like he was in shock, that Adam really was careless enough to just hurt himself like that. “You have to be careful with fire.”

“It doesn’t burn when Emma does it”, Adam assured him.

“It’s alright, my dear. Children just want to try out exciting things and it doesn’t actually hurt, if you only go through the middle of the flame and don’t touch the top”, Aziraphale tried to calm him down.

“I don’t care. It is not necessary to do something dangerous, when there is no need for it. Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt, but what would it matter. If it burns, you get hurt. If it burns not, you get nothing, so there is no need to be so careless.”

“Sorry, dada”, Adam said and Crowley let out his breath. He let go of Adam’s hand, but didn’t lit the candle again.

“Are you ready for the main course?”, Aziraphale asked.

“There is more food?” Adam sounded excited.

„Of course, this was just the appetizer. A fancy dinner is not complete without at least an appetizer, a main course and a dessert.”

“Is it cake?”

“The dessert is cake, yes, Adam.” Aziraphale stood up and collected the bowls to put them in the sink. He put oven mittens on and took a cooking form with a stuffed chicken out of the stove. Crowley put aside the salt, pepper and the candle for Aziraphale to put the chicken down in the middle of the table.

“I hope, it doesn’t taste burned”, Aziraphale said worried.

“It looks really delicious, angel.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

Aziraphale leaned over to place a kiss on Crowley’s lips. He plucked the oven mittens off his hands and sat back down at the table.

“Do you want to cut it, my dear?”

“I want! I want!”, Adam shouted and already reached for the knife.

“No, Adam!”

 

-//-

 

“Crowley? Dear? Where are you?”, Aziraphale called as he walked through the flat and searched for the demon. Adam was off to school and the angel had spent his time reading more parental guidebooks on how to prevent your child from growing up to hate you, the earth and destroy everything in an apocalypse.

“I am here, angel!”

Aziraphale followed the voice and found his way to the bathroom.

“Here again?”, he asked surprised as he found the demon on the running washing machine and vibrating slightly to the rotating spin-dryer. Crowley was dramatically plastered all over the machine with his limbs hanging down limply. He still had his sunglasses on, but they were hanging loosely from his ears. The demon didn’t bother to look up and only turned his head slightly to see the disapproving look on the angel’s face.

“What?”, Crowley said defensively. “I like to lie here.”

“This looks positively spine-wrenching.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, because a snake’s spine worked differently from a human’s spine. Still, he propped himself up on his arms and elbows and huffed as he struggled to get his entire body back on the machine. He crossed his legs and leaned against the bathroom wall behind him. In his stunt the white shirt he was wearing had ridden up to reveal a line of skin and Aziraphale stared at it hypnotized as Crowley tucked it back down and took his sunglasses off. He looked up at the angel, who sighed and tried to remember what he had wanted to say.

“What do you have there?”, Crowley asked nodding his head at the book Aziraphale was holding in his hand.

“Oh! Right!” The angel opened the book and started looking for the page he had marked. “This is a book about children and”

“Why is there a guinea pig on the cover?”, Crowley asked alarmed.

“Well, because this is a book about children and pets and how a pet can have a positive influence on children.” He already saw how the demon wanted to interrupt him and hastily raised his hands. „Now, before you say anything, I did some research and discovered some astonishing facts about humans and animals.”

“Yeah?”, Crowley asked intrigued.

“You know how they don‘t really care about destroying animals‘ habitats and hurt them to find out if a cosmetic product will cause allergic reactions to humans and how they have no scruple to kill an animal, because they once read in a book that the animal might hurt them, if they got too close to it.“

“Yes…“ Crowley scratched his head and yawned. Aziraphale thought he had maybe woken the demon from a nap or something. „I listened to the radio again and there was something about a wolf that was seen near a village, so they went into the forest and killed like a dozen wolves to teach them a lesson not to enter human’s territory.” Crowley rubbed his eyes and looked sleepily at the angel. He was trembling slightly from the rumbling washing machine beneath him.

“Right”, Aziraphale replied. „Well, this is somehow weird since in other situations people care way more about animals than humans.”

“They do?” Crowley sounded astonished. „Is this one of your commandments. This stuff about loving your next like yourself, because that stuff sounds just as unrealistic to me as loving an animal more than yourself or at least your neighbour.”

Aziraphale thought about lounging into another discussion, that those were indeed NOT the then commandments and Crowley just got a little confused with all the rules humans had written down in the bibles, but refrained from it. It would only lead to another debate about the fact, that Crowley wanted to include the commandment “First come, first served” into the stone tablet instead of one of the others and he really didn’t want to have that conversation again. Instead, he just waved it off and opened the book to some papers, he had torn out of the newspapers and put in between the book pages.

“No, really. It happens mostly with big disasters where like hundreds of people die or in movies. If you show humans a movie where all the characters die, they will only ask if the dog is alright.”

Crowley was yawning again, but tried to stop it to reply:

“What?”

“I know, right?”

“What are you trying to tell me, angel?”

“I think we should get Adam a dog.”

“WHAT?”

“Think about it! Maybe he won’t care about saving humans, saving dirty cities or a dying planet, when he can have instead a big fight with angels and demons like the knights in his books, but he will still want to save the earth to save his dog.”

Crowley looked at him incredulous. He shook his head.

“All these years of us trying our best to be good parents and our son will save the world for a dog.”

Aziraphale closed the book and put it under his arm.

“Oh, don’t be bitter about it.”

“How can I not?”

“Are you really surprised that someone rather wants to do his pet a favour than a demon?”

“Well no, but I am not just a demon, I am his father.”

“Something that might change once he finds out he is adopted.”

Crowley stared at him in horror. This thought had actually never occurred to him, but the angel was right. Sooner or later Adam would find out that he was the Antichrist. It was not matter of them telling him, it was just something, that he would be aware of once he achieved his full power in only a few years. There was no way telling how he would react, when he found out not by his “parents” telling him themselves, but by the knowledge of it just breaking down on him that he was indeed adopted and the son of Lucifer rather than these weird ethereal beings, that had gotten way too attached to anything and everything human in the last six centuries.

He would hate them.

Adam would hate them and for good reason.

They had lied to him all his life. The fact that his life would be only eleven years long at that point would hardly matter to a young boy just leaving his childhood behind in favour of puberty or the throne of hell.

“Do you think…” Crowley hesitated and looked up from his legs he had nearly stared holes in. The angel looked at him with worry. “If we would get him a dog, do you think, he would hate us less when he finds out?”

Aziraphale debated this.

“It’s always worth a try”, he said nodding. At least this way he got to follow the advice in his guidebook without demon stopping him, because he was absolutely against getting a pet. Aziraphale had just gotten his way and he felt quite smug about it.

“I let you decide what kind of dog”, he tried to brighten the demon up. Crowley scowled.


	24. Part 21: Adam gets a …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this has probably just been the greatest day of my life. As a devoted Good Omens-fan that has spent months, no - years waiting for the release of the series, I have just binge-watched the whole show in one go and now lost more or less any sense of reality and maybe my mind.  
> Not to be dramatic, this show was brilliant and if nobody finds the time today to read my update because of it, I ain’t even mad.
> 
> But anyway, I still have a new chapter for today, kind of an open-ending thing, you will get the next part of the story next week, I promise. Hope you like it and have a nice Do(n’t)omsday!

“You. Little rascal.”

Adam looked up from where he was sitting on his carpet and tearing a magazine apart. Crowley looked down at the pictures of furniture, laughing people from advertisements and animals, that were spread all over the floor. The blond boy sitting in the middle of this chaos was rather clumsily trying to cut out a picture of a car with one of those scissors for children that were as sharp as a spoon. He turned around and looked at the demon standing in the doorway.

“Yes, dada?”

Crowley crossed his arms before his chest and leaned against the doorframe with his shoulder. He smirked.

“What are you doing?”

Adam turned his head away again and reached for the glue and a big white paper. He glued the picture of a water slide on the white paper and the picture of an elephant over it. It looked like the elephant had the time of its life.

“I am making a house.” Adam searched the pile of pictures for another one.

“A house?”

“Yes.” He glued a basketball player over the elephant and then his own hand to the carpet. He stared at his hand stuck to the carpet and gave it a tentative pull. As he tore it away it was covered in lint. Unbothered he reached for the glue again and glued the picture of a window to the top corner of the paper sheet, where one would maybe put the sun, if this was a picture of a landscape. It was a rather fuzzy window with half the carpet stuck to it.

“It is a great house with a pool and lots of animals”, Adam explained.

“I see.” For a while, the demon just stood in the door and watched the boy tinkering together the collage of his dreamhouse. He then asked:

“Would you like to have a dog?”

The open glue fell on the carpet as the boy turned around with wide eyes. He sprang up from the floor and ran to hug the demon. He flung his arms around Crowley, who had to lift his arms, so Adam wouldn’t knock his head against them. Adam looked up at him with great expectations in his eyes.

“Really? Am I really getting a dog? Really, really? A real dog? A dog for myself? A real dog? Not like a toy, but really a real dog? Like, right now? Not when I am old and can buy a dog for myself, but you are giving me a dog right now? A real dog?”

Crowley nodded.

“Really a real dog for real.”

“THANK YOU!”, Adam shouted and hugged the demon tighter. Crowley chuckled, but had no air so tight was he being hugged. He patted the boy’s head and told him:

“You have to stop squeezing me to death if you want a dog, kiddo.”

Adam let go of Crowley to jump and dance around his room. Badly cut out pictures of animals and furniture were flying around and Adam started chanting a song that went more or less:

“I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog”

“I know you are exited”, Crowley told him. “but we will only go to the shelter on Saturday. First, you still have to go to school tomorrow and then on Saturday, Anathema will come by for your tutoring lesson. So, try to concentrate and then in the afternoon we will drive to the shelter and look for a dog.”

“I am getting a dog I am getting a dog I am getting a dog”

“Adam, did you hear me?”

“Yes, dada! I am getting a dog I am getting a dog”

“Shouldn’t have told you before Saturday”, Crowley muttered and left the room. He went to the kitchenette and snitched himself a piece of the cake that was hidden in the cabinet, where Adam couldn’t find it. Chewing he wandered around aimlessly in the flat until he noticed the angel sitting in the shop and reading a book. It had gotten a lot warmer in the last few weeks and sunshine was falling in through the tall windows letting the dust dance in the air. Aziraphale seemed to haven’t noticed him as engrossed as he was in the book in his hands and Crowley didn’t want to disturb him. So, he sat down in one of the chairs squeezed between the shelves and piles of books and reached for the book closest to him. He read in it half-heartedly, jumping from page to page and completely spoiling himself by reading the ending first.

“Who is dead?”, he mumbled to himself as he read the last page and flicked back to the beginning of the book. He searched for the name and when he found it, only read what was happening to the unfortunate fellow that would die in the end.

“Oh, I haven’t noticed you are here”, the angel suddenly said and Crowley looked up from his book. Aziraphale had put his book aside and watched the demon reading.

“I told Adam we would get him a dog on Saturday.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“He was quite excited about it.”

“I heard something like that. He was singing again.”

Crowley grinned.

“Thanks for letting me tell him. Now I am his favourite parent forever.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. He then seemed to notice something outside the window and glared at it. Crowley turned to see a man standing outside and looking inside the shop. He gave him his best death glare, too, that even was effectful with his sunglasses on. Too late, he noticed he wasn’t even wearing his sunglasses right know, which would explain the horrified look on the potential customer’s face. The man backed away from the window and hurried down the street. Crowley turned away from the window. He was a little embarrassed about letting himself go like that to just forget about wearing his cover. Aziraphale didn’t notice him, though, still glaring at the window.

“Nobody should have the time to walk around the city and harass unsuspecting shop owners, when every decent person should be at work”, the angel muttered and reached for another book. Crowley smiled and cleared his throat. He looked down at his book and put it aside. He leaned back in his chair and enjoyed the feeling of the sunlight warming his face through the glass.

“Just think of all the customers with allergies you can get rid of once we have a watchdog.”

 

-//-

 

“I am getting a dog!”, Adam shouted as soon as Billy opened the door. Susan was bringing both boys to school today; so, Aziraphale had dressed Adam and made him take his backpack next door. Susan was now trying to get Billy ready, but he was too distracted gaping at Adam.

“Really?”

“Billy, put your arm in the jacket, I can’t do it for you.”

“Really, really!” Adam nodded.

Susan had started to work halftime again since Billy was now old enough to go to school. Last year it had worked out fine that she could first bring her son to school and then go to work right after, but now she sometimes had to start earlier. She had asked Aziraphale and Crowley, if they could drive Billy to school on these days. They had agreed, of course, and would have been fine to do so without repayment since Aziraphale had no scruple closing his shop at all times and Crowley was caught less in traffic jams than normal car drivers, but Susan had insisted to return the favour.  
Adam didn’t object.

“Like Scooby-Doo?” Billy asked with sparkling eyes. Adam shook his head and made wild gestures with his hands.

“No! Not like Scooby-doo! Like Snowy!”

Billy’s face fell.

“Noooo. Snowy’s stupid.”

Adam made a face like his whole family had just been insulted. His cheeks got red and his mouth turned into something like an open canon.

“Snowy’s not stupid””, he yelled. “He’s a detective!”

“Now your left arm”, Susan told Billy, who tried to wrestle out of her grasp to fight with Adam over the honour of two cartoon dogs. She sighed as he started to pull on his right arm. “Your other left arm.”

Aziraphale took Adam’s hand and stood patiently by as Susan finally got Billy into his clothes. She put on her own shoes and jacket while always holding on to at least one hand of her son, then picked up her bag and the keys. She waved Aziraphale to get out on the street and walked them to her car.

“Are you sure you will be alright?”, he asked her as she made Billy sit on the passenger seat and Adam in the back so they couldn’t kill each other on the drive to school.

“It is fine. Are you getting a dog from the shelter?” She threw her hair that had gotten long enough to fall over her shoulders back and opened the trunk to put in both the boy’s backpacks.

“Yes, we will go there on Sunday.”

“Are you sure you have enough space in the shop?”

Aziraphale shrugged.

“We kind of prioritized the fact that a boy should have a dog over any planning at all. We just look for a dog and then see how it goes. At least that’s what Cro- Anthony said, when I asked him if he wanted to make some plans.”

“A boy should have a dog, huh?” She threw the trunk shut.

“That’s what my book said”, Aziraphale said a little defensively as he realized, what he had said could be taken as an insult as Susan hadn’t gotten her son a dog. “I am sure a dog is not mandatory.” He remembered the bird cage he had seen in their flat with the little golden birds chirping and singing all day. “Birds are fine as well, I am sure.”

“Hey, I got the telly and Adam always comes over to watch with Billy and now you will have the dog and Billy will always come over to play with it. It’s a fair trade.” She patted him on the shoulder. “I will pick them up again after school. See you.” Then she got in the car with the arguing boys and closed the door behind her. Aziraphale watched as the car left the parking lot and drove away. He frowned.

“That doesn’t seem fair at all. Telly’s don’t need to be washed and taken for walks.” His lips turned into a narrow line. “She just mocked me in a very subtle way for me implying she failed parenting by not getting her son a dog!” He looked incredulous.

 

-//-

Saturday.

“You can’t give him a Chihuahua.”

“Why not?”, Aziraphale asked, again, incredulous. “They have the right size for a small boy and are just as vibrating with life!”

“No”, Anathema told him, then massaged the bridge of her nose. “They are vibrating, because life is too much for them. Way too small. Also, you don’t think Adam will stay this small forever, do you?”

The angel turned around in the car as far as he could to look at the seats in the back, where Anathema was sitting next to Adam, who was grinning happily. Aziraphale thought about how there was a good chance life would end in a few years and Adam would be no taller than an eleven-year old boy. Maybe this was just the height he should use as an orientation for the size of dog they should get Adam. A dog with the perfect size for an eleven-year old boy.

“How tall were you when you were eleven?”, he asked the girl.

“I don’t know.” Anathema snorted and Aziraphale asked himself if it was just this teenager that had no respect with her employers or if it were nowadays humans in general. “What does it matter? Adam is not eleven. Anyway, I was probably taller than him.”

“YOU WERE NOT!”, Adam shouted at her. “I am like a billion and one centimetre taller than you!”

“Oh really? How come you look so tiny then?”

Adam tried to lunge himself at her, but was held back by the seatbelt. Anathema easily dodged the blows the boy blew at her with swinging arms while yelling his war cry.

“No fighting in the car!”, Crowley warned them. “Angel, tell them to be peaceful. That’s your field of expertise, not mine.”

“Anathema, we can only take you with us if you are nice to Adam”, the angel told their son’s tutor while turning around in the car. Adam was now pulling at Anathema’s jacket and Anathema was trying to tear away the little fingers clawing at her like a wolf. “ADAM”, Aziraphale said sharply and the boy begrudgingly let go of the girl.

“Why is Anathema here, anyway?”, Crowley asked the angel in a low voice. Aziraphale sighed and turned back forward. He sunk back in his seat and answered in a whisper:

“You know, she came over for her tutoring lesson with Adam and Adam told her, we would get him a dog, because he told everybody. I mean, literally, everybody. He was very excited and Anathema said, she has never been to a shelter and really likes dogs, so he invited her to come with us.”

“Okay, but why did we agree to take her with us?”, Crowley retorted in the same low voice but the child and the teenager in the back weren’t listening anyway. They had made up rather fast, which was probably thanks to the Antichrist’s short span of attention that was easily distracted by birds or colourful pictures. Adam had pulled out one of his comics and was trying to persuade Anathema into reading it to him. She refused, because she feared to get sick in the car while reading.

“Then I will read to you”, Adam decided and opened the comic book on the first page. He had some trouble with reading the tiny font over the rumbling of the car, so he just read the large words like “BOOM”, “POW” and “CRASH”. He thought it was a very good book; full of action and interesting dialogues.

“Are there any girls in your comic?”

Adam nodded.

“There’s a really funny girl, but she never fights.”

“Why?”

"She’s way too strong for all the villains in this comic. So, she just leaves the fighting to the boys.”

“Because the story would be over too soon?”

“What?”

“Does she not fight, because then the villain would be defeated too soon and the comic would be very short?”

“Yes, she would defeat the villain and then the boys have no one to fight anymore.”

“Comics without villains are boring, right?”

“Yeah, then there is no one to fight.”

“Exactly.”

“I like the villain that always tells jokes, before he fights with the hero.” He showed Anathema the comic. She leaned a little bit over without moving too much to not risk her carsickness. Adam pointed at the villain and began to explain his backstory to her. „There is also a TV show, but we have no telly, so I only watch it sometimes when I am over at Billy’s. I think reading comics is more fun. I really like reading comics with Billy, because then we can think what the hero’s do and it is often a lot better than what they do in the telly.” He brightened up. “It will be great though when I get a dog! He can be my sidekick and bite all the villains!”

“What kind of dog do you want? One of those great big Rottweilers?”

“No, it’s going to be the kind of dog you can have fun with”, Adam explained. “Not a big dog, but one of those dogs that’s brilliantly intelligent and can go down rabbit holes and has one funny ear that always looks inside out. And a proper mongrel, too. A pedigree mongrel.”

Anathema smiled at him wistfully.

“What will you call him?”

“I’ll call him…”

“Yes?”

“I’ll call him Dog”, said Adam, positively. “It saves a lot of trouble, a name like that.”

“Did you here that?”, Aziraphale asked Crowley in the front of the car and nudged him in the side with his elbow. Crowley grumbled.

“Well, that was very specific.”

“I am just not sure, where we should find a rabbit hole for the dog to go down in the middle of London”, Aziraphale whispered back.

“We’re in Soho. We’ll probably find other holes”, Crowley retorted and sped up to drive through a red traffic light. Aziraphale wanted to answer, but instead clung to the car in fear of an accident and sudden discorporation.


	25. Part 22: No dolphins and other animals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me (realizing this is more or less a story about all the characters from Good Omens, whose names begin with the letter ‘A’): “Well, at least I can blame someone else for those names.”

“Hello, er, good day.” Crowley entered the animal shelter and walked up to the counter. The room was covered in posters of animals, the inside of animals, skeletons of animals, the care of animals and medication for animals. A big plant stood in the corner and watched the demon warily as he put his arm casually on the counter and greeted the woman behind it. “We are here to purchase a dog.” He paused and turned around to where his family and Anathema followed him behind. “For the boy.”

Anathema sneezed.

“How lovely!” The woman clasped her hands together. She had dark skin, black hair in an afro and was wearing a blue shirt under a khaki vest that Crowley imagined lion trainers wearing. “We have a lot of different breeds here, dogs that are looking for a loving home, where they can spend their time with a family that suits their character. Just give me a second, then I will show you” The end of the sentence got lost as she turned around to put her head through an open door behind the counter.  
“ADRIA!”, she suddenly shouted and Crowley jumped back from the counter. A thump could be heard, similar to the sound of a person rolling from a couch and falling unto the floor. Seconds later another woman appeared in the door with dishevelled red hair and a cushion pattern imprinted in one red cheek.

“What?”, she asked, before she noticed the strangers in the room. “Oh, we have customers. How can I help you…. gentlemen?”

Crowley stared at the woman.

“Er…” He looked back at the angel, but Aziraphale was otherwise occupied by Adam holding his hand and dragging him around the room to look at posters showing the digestive system of dolphins. Crowley turned back to the woman and asked confused:

“Do you also sell dolphins?”

The woman, Adria raised a surprised eyebrow.

“No, we don’t sell dolphins”, the first woman said. “We don’t even sell dogs. We just test if you are qualified to have a dog and then make you sign a contract.”

“Please keep the contract in case you want to return the dog and don’t just dump the dog somewhere in the streets”, Adria added in earnest.

“Sure…”, Crowley said slowly. A fist slammed down on the counter and he jumped back once again.

“We want a pedigree mongrel dog with a funny ear that can go down rabbit holes”, Anathema stated without removing her fist from the table. Crowley glanced at the three women standing on two sides of the counter. Anathema sneezed. The woman with the lion-tamer-vest smiled.

“Well, that is something we can work with.” She looked at the woman with the red hair and the cushion pattern on her cheek. “You take over the counter and I show our customers around.”

“Ay ay, captain”, Adria mumbled and drew the chair behind the counter back to sit down. The lion tamer waved at Crowley, Aziraphale, Anathema and Adam to follow her.

“Let’s go and look at the dogs.”

Adam gasped happily and let go of Aziraphale’s hand to run after the lion-tamer. They followed her behind the counter and around the corner, where a long hallway led them past a few doors, behind some of them sounds of shuffling and even whimpering could be heard.

“My name is Tami”, the woman introduced herself while never slowing down. “Don’t worry, those sounds are just our guinea pigs. They can be quite noisy. We will go to the dog kennels.”

She led them down the hall and opened the very last door. As soon as the door was opened a brush of ‘outside’ came inside like the wind and it smelled like hay, dried meat and metall. Crowley scrunched his nose up as the scent of saliva and chewed rubber reached him. He grabbed the angel by the arm and whispered into his ear a little panicky.

“We could still turn around. Tell Adam, we meant a toy dog not a real one. What do you think?”

The angel shot him a sympathetic smile and put his hand over the demon’s.

“Don’t worry my dear. My book says if a boy wants to learn responsibility, he has to care for his dog himself.”

Crowley frowned, then brightened up.

“You mean, he has to do all the work himself?” He sounded exactly like one could expect from a demon that had once slept through the bigger part of a century out of laziness.

Adam in the meantime had gone through the door, Tami was holding open for him, like a king about to choose the knights he wanted in his army. Aziraphale ushered to follow him behind. Hesitating, Crowley looked around.

“Where has the girl with the weird name gone?”

 

-//-

 

While they had followed Tami down the hallway, Anathema had felt the calling of one of the doors. Glancing at the others she stayed behind to look through the small window in the door and something had tickled her nose. She sneezed and tried to blink the water in her eyes away. Curious she reached for the door handle to see if it was open.  
It was.  
She opened the door and glanced inside. Roughly a hundred eyes glared at her from behind bars. Silent purring hang in the air and Anathema’s eyes began to itch. She sneezed again.

 

-//-

 

“I want this dog and that and that and this! Papa, how many dogs can I have?”

Adam’s eyes were like sparkling stars as he was running between the cages with barking dogs inside. Most of the animals had sprung up as the boy had come running to stick his nose threw the bars and try to pet them. Only a few were still sleeping on old blankets or baskets.

“Only one”, Aziraphale said firmly. Adam turned around and gave the angel his best puppy eyes.

“Dada? How many dogs can I have?”

Crowley seemed shocked as suddenly the boy directed his puppy eyes at him and the angel turned around to stare at him intently, sending him a warning to not say anything wrong. The demon realized he had been singled out as the weaker parent and his face scrunched up in distaste.

“You don’t complain and get one dog, you complain and get maybe a snail”, he scowled. Adam quickly returned to the dogs. He started asking Tami questions about the names and sorts of dogs, which dogs were the best to be a boy’s best friend and if any of them were good at catching thieves and finding clues at crime scenes.

Meanwhile, Crowley crossed his arms before his chest and looked rather smugly that he had established his authority with his son again.

“Nicely done”, Aziraphale told him and patted him on the shoulder. “I feel you are really getting the hang of when something is a vile threat and when it is just strict parenting.”

Crowley smiled proudly.

“Anathema, look! This dog looks just like you!”, Adam shouted and turned to look for the girl. When he didn’t see her, he asked: “Where is Anathema?”

The angel turned his head in surprise, looked behind himself and behind the demon, while still gripping his shoulder as if he was stirring him around like a boat in the sea looking for whales.  
The whale sneezed somewhere down the hallway.

“Anathema!”, Adam called for her and ran past his parents to get her. “Look at that dog!”

“Goodness”, Aziraphale said and hurried to follow the Antichrist.

“Don’t run. It scares the dogs”, Tami told them and followed behind.

Adam not-quite-ran, but hurried back down the hallway and stopped once he reached the door Anathema had walked through. He stopped and glanced into the room. His eyes widened.

“Anathema, your face is so red.”

“It’s not”, Anathema protested and sneezed into a tissue. Adam entered the room and looked over all the cages with fuzzy furballs inside. He stepped closer to one cage to stick his finger through the bars, but hastily sprang back as a clawed paw shot out to scratch him.

“Cats”, he whispered fascinated and went on to look into the next cage.

“Yeah, I would really like to have one, but I think I am a little bit aller” A sudden sneezing fit interrupted her sentence and Adam just nodded distractedly.  
He looked around the room. Suddenly, something caught his attention. A few cages down two hairy arms reached out on the aisle and seemed to try and catch the air or even reach the other side of the room with the other cats. It looked a little like the animal the arms belonged to was waving. Adam grinned and walked to the waving cat. As the animal came into view and it could also see Adam it stopped the moving of its arms for a second and stared out of wide yellow eyes at the boy. Apart from the eyes the animal was only a black blob and Adam had to laugh, because the arms sticking out from the blob looked so misplaced and the eyes like the lights of an approaching car. A pink tongue stuck out and licked over the cat’s nose, before disappearing again.

“Hey, you”, Adam greeted the cat and hold his hand up to caressing the scrawny arms. As soon as his hand came in reach, the cat snapped for him and grabbed his hand with both its paws. Caught between the claws not quite hurting him yet, both Adam and the cat froze up, before the cat pulled Adam’s hand close until it was to the grid and the cat stuck its tongue out again. It started licking the Antichrist’s finger.

Adam stared at the cat with awe as his finger was showered with barbed affection.

“Oh my goodness, what happened to your face?”, the angel asked somewhere behind him.

“Nothing. Just a little allergic”, Anathema sniffled.

“We better get you out of here, before you stop breathing”, Crowley told her and led her out of the room. “I will wait outside with you.” Then he muttered:

“But you really could have told us before we brought you with us to the shelter.”

Anathema just kept breathing into her tissue as she was led outside to wait in a room that wasn’t covered in fur.

“This is where we keep the cats”, Tami explained and Aziraphale nodded eagerly.

“What… nice animals.” His eyes fell on Adam, currently being devoured by a black blob. “Adam! What are you doing?”

“Please don’t shout. It scares the animals”, Tami told the angel.

Adam turned around and stared still wide-eyed at his parent.

“I’ve been chosen.”

Aziraphale tilted his head, then opened his mouth, but only uncoherent words fell out in his hurry to drag Adam away from this terrible, terrible idea.

“Oh, oh no, Adam, we already decided, my book, I mean, it was all, well not planned out, but the book, clearly a dog, a dog, not a, well not, anyway”

“Can I have a cat, papa?”

Tami stepped up to the cage Adam was standing in front of and carefully pried Adam’s hand out of the cat’s grip. She then put on rough khaki gloves, opened the cage and reached inside to take the black blob. She pulled it outside and the cat looked weary around hissing at her and then struggling to free itself out of her grip.

“Shoo”, she told the cat and kneeled down, so Adam could have a better look at it. Adam also kneeled down and started petting the animal. As the cat noticed him it shimmied to get into his lap. “She likes you”, Tami said. Adam’s face lit up and he looked back up at the angel. Aziraphale sighed.

“I suppose…”, He looked around if the demon was here for support, but he was still outside with Anathema. “I suppose this is alright.”

 

-//-

 

“Well, now that you have a cat, will you still name it Dog?”, Anathema asked before again sneezing as they stood before the counter as Adria sat up the contract so they could purchase the cat Adam had chosen. Or maybe it had been the other way around and the cat had actually chosen him.

“Of course, not”, Adam told her. He had put his hands on the counter and looked the cat, that was sitting in a transport box that was placed on the counter. “I will name it Cat.”

The demon and the angel shared a look.

“To save trouble?”, Anathema asked.

“To save trouble.”

Crowley stood a little closer to the angel, arms crossed over his chest and tilted his head to whisper in the angel’s ear.

“I knew I was the stronger parent.”

Aziraphale blushed.

“It wasn’t my fault. The cat has chosen him and you know how he can get, when he wants something. Anyway, cats and dogs aren’t THAT different, so would you please, er, please, just sign the contract.”

Crowley smirked and walked to the counter, where Adria was holding out a pencil for him. As he leaned over to sign, Adam tipped him on the arm. The demon turned to look at him.

“Yeah, Adam?”

“Cat has just the same eyes as you, papa.”

Crowley stared at the black blob that looked back at him like headlights of an approaching car. Adria also tried to get a look at the cat and frowned. Crowley did his best to glare at her through the sunglasses.

“That will be all”, he said and signed. He took the box with the cat and handed it to Adam. “Have a nice day.”

“We were happy to help you”, Tami called as they left the animal shelter. They walked up to the car parked in front of the building and Aziraphale allowed Adam to hold the transport box on his lap, but only if him and Anathema would trade places. Afraid the boy wouldn’t be able to hold on to the box once the car was driving – and the demon was a mad driver – the angel wanted to be there to hold the box, too, just in case. Besides, it was probably better if Anathema was as far away from Cat as the car allowed with ongoing sneezing.

“You know”, Anathema broke the silence as they were on their way back to the book shop. “cats were once worshipped as gods. They also indicate bad luck, witches and are the animals of the devil.”

Adam smiled at Cat trying to claw at him through the grid.

“You are no bad luck, aren’t you?”, he asked her. She hit him with her paw, but without claws. Adam giggled. Crowley, who was driving the car even if he couldn’t actually see the road, turned around to the angel, who was sitting on the back seat.

“How dare you bringing the animal of the devil into our home, angel”, he joked. Aziraphale sulkily crossed his arms over his chest.

“Would you just drive the car, please.”


	26. Part 23: Illegal barbeques

“I am so glad you will be joining us this summer.”

Crowley’s head jerked up from where he was dozing in the sunlight. He and the angel had been invited to an illegal barbeque. An illegal barbeque on their own rooftop. The whole ordeal had been quite nice and pleasant – as the angel thought – or nerve-racking – as the demon thought. This is how it had come to this:

 

-//-

 

“Dear?”, Aziraphale had called into the book shop, the telephone pressed to his sweater while he was standing next to the landline. Crowley had just walked by and not gotten the clue that it would have been the moment to run.

“Yes, angel?”, he had asked quite unsuspecting.

“Oh good, there you are! I am just talking to Pam”, he had gestured to the phone in his hand. “and she asked me if we would like to attend a barbeque.”

Crowley had shaken his head in confusion.

“Who the heaven is Pam?”

The angel had shot him an unbelieving look and put his hands on his hips in exasperation completely forgetting about the phone and jumping in surprise as it had hit his side. He had gestured the demon to come closer and then whispered in his ear as to not to let the person on the other side of the telephone line hear:

“The twins’ parents!”

“What twins?”

“Shhhh!”, Aziraphale had shushed him and Crowley had sighed and lowered his voice.

“What twins?”

“Eric and Aaron!”

“Shhh”, Crowley had put a finger on his lips and grinned at the angel. They had looked quite suspicious; huddled into a corner in the bookstore whispering at each other while standing close enough that they were only not quite touching. Innocent passersby might have thought they were up to something or even trying to keep secrets from invisible ghosts that haunted the book shop. Anyway, both are good reasons not to enter this special bookshop and leave them to their… things.

“Oh, shush yourself”, Aziraphale had retorted and proceeded to glare at the demon. “I can’t believe you already forgot who the twins are. They were here to meet Adam just the last week.”

“Ooooh”, the demon had exclaimed. “The other little rascals!”

The angel had hurried to press the phone closer to his chest and had hissed:

“Yes, those two! Although, I doubt this definition is enough of a hint for you which children we are talking about as you call them all little rascals and monsters and disasters.”

“It’s more of a job description. Every child has the same job”, Crowley had explained with a handwave.

“Well, anyway, Pam is asking if we might want to attend an illegal Barbeque.”

And the demon had grinned.

“Illegal, you say?”

 

-//-

 

It had really been Crowley’s own fault for not asking any more questions.

It had turned out, Pam, as in Dean and Pam or Pam and Dean, the parents of the twins, did not own a rooftop or much less a garden, where one could host an illegal barbeque. They only had an uncle, that had won the third place in a lottery and had acquired a brand-new barbeque grill he had no use for.  
After asking Dean, who was prone to make bad decisions, if he might take the grill off his uncle’s hands, he had done so with the thought they might use it in the summer, when they went on holiday at their cottage in the countryside. Now they had a grill and only needed someone with a place for it.

“Don’t you have practically a garden on your rooftop?”, Pam had asked Aziraphale and Aziraphale had remembered the parent’s guide he had recently read and what it had said about “outside activities” and “garden parties”.

“Actually, we do”, he had answered and only a few days later he had apologized lightly to the demon standing between the grill, countless baskets of food and drinks and the greenhouse.

“No one is entering my greenhouse” he had said and established his authority by accepting the offer of a folding chair, which he had put up in front of the greenhouse. He had sat in it with a disgruntled look on his face, while Aziraphale had helped putting up the grill on the other half of the rooftop, chatting with Dean on the basis that they were two dads until Crowley had sunk back in the chair and fallen asleep.

“He is keeping watch over his plants”, Aziraphale had explained and told the children not to disrupt him. Adam was playing with Eric and Aaron some sort of police game and then Billy and his parents and Emma and Alexandra had come over and were now playing a game together, where one half of the group was unsuspecting barbequers and the other half was the police arresting them for illegal grilling activities on London’s rooftops.

 

-//-

 

“I am so glad you will be joining us this summer”, Pam told Crowley as she unfolded her own chair next to his and sat down to bathe a little in the sunlight. Crowley’s head jerked up and he noticed his lap was indeed not on fire, but covered by a black cat. He looked down at it with distain, but did not try to remove Cat as she was sleeping soundly. He glared at the scene in front of him. More people had joined their little barbeque, standing around, chatting and drinking beer. The children, Crowley could only identify his son and maybe a few of his friends that he had met already, were playing a very confusing game were they interrogating suspects – the grownups – and sneaking around the grill to steal a sausage whenever no one was looking. Crowley growled. Then he remembered, who had woken him from his nap. He adjusted his sunglasses and turned to Pam.

“What?”

She was also wearing sunglasses, which always confused Crowley as he was mostly the only one to wear them. He himself was wearing an unbelievably ugly shirt that Aziraphale had bought him. Some green monstrosity with parrots and toucans all over. He was flaunting it in the hope it would blind a few humans with its grotesque, but had had no success yet. Aziraphale was wearing white as usual and Crowley blinked at him beaming in the sunlight and chattering with Dean, who was handling the grill.

“I said, I am glad you will be joining us this summer”, Pam repeated herself with a smile and Crowley turned to look at her.

“What summer?”, Crowley asked confused, shifting as much as possible without waking Cat.

“July, when the children have holiday from school.”

Crowley blinked. He still wasn’t sure, what was going on. If they were talking about holidays, why would he have to see them then, he wondered. The only time he could not avoid running into other parents was, when he picked Adam up from school and then he could always act as if he did not recognize them, which was most of the time true anyway.

“Joining you where?”, he asked. Pam raised her eyebrows.

“At our summer camp.”

“Camp?”

“Has Aziraphale not told you?”

“Told me what?”

“About the camp?”

Crowley’s face scrunched up even more, before he began gesturing with his hands and said:

“Oh, you mean this doesn’t involve me? Whatever Aziraphale is doing is fine, I am sure.”

“No, no,”, Pam shook her head wildly and reached for the beer can by her feet.” I am talking about the summer camp! We sent you an invitation for our own home-made summer camp, because we have a cottage in the countryside, where we go every year and spend the holidays. Dean and I thought that it might be nice for the boys to invite some of their friends to stay with us. It’s not like there isn’t enough place in the garden; so, there is plenty of room for you to camp and my sister Beatrice is coming to; I am sure you will like her. She likes to wear leader jackets and sunglasses, too. She and her partner Sam have three really lovely girls, you know, Sam had been married before, but got divorced and was a single parent for quite some time. Just imagine, a single parent with three children!” She opened her beer can and the beer ran out a little bit. Shaking her wet hand, she continued, “We honestly never thought Beatrice would be someone to have kids, but here we are now!”  
She took a sip from her beer and looked excitedly at Crowley, who was everything else than happy to be forced to participate in a grown-ups-conversation at a barbeque that was seemingly just an excuse for a playdate for her own kids.

“Dada, I need Cat, so we can arrest her.” Adam had come up to the two parents sitting in the garden chairs and was holding his hands out for the cat. Crowley gently slid his hands under the burning cat that was more or less absorbing every bit of sunlight that fell on the roof and placed it in Adam’s hands. Cat was pudding in the boy’s hug and purred loudly.

“Thanks”, Adam chirped and sprang away to continue the game.

“Well, I should get up as well”, Crowley huffed and stood up. “I have to, er, see that the plants are alright. They, er, they don’t like the smell of beef, they are all vegetarians you know”, he told Pam and disappeared into the greenhouse.

 

-//-

 

“So”, Dean said.

“Hm?”, Aziraphale returned and kept looking around happily. It was quite a nice day with blue sky as far as the eye could see and in the traffic jam down the roads a car was playing “The Bohemian Rhapsody” through an open window. Aziraphale had offered to bring his records and play some Tchaikovsky, but Dean had politely declined, saying he didn’t need no posh music, but only beer and the sound of the meat sizzling on his grill. Aziraphale had smiled and thought of all the customers that might want to come to his shop today, but sadly had to realize it was closed again for personal reasons. He was still smiling.

“So, camping, huh?”, Dean said and took a bite from a sausage that looked a little like it was still frozen.

“Oh yes!”, Aziraphale replied. “Camping. Nature. Sleeping bags. Trees and… nature!”

Dean chewed and nodded solemnly.

“That’s my kind of vacation anyway.” He looked over his shoulder to were Pam was sitting in the garden chair and bathing in the sun. “Pam isn’t really fond of camping. Says it’s something for weird white people, but in my family it’s tradition. I’ve gone camping with my dad and my dad’s gone camping his with dad and now it’s the boys turn. I’m almost sad we have the cottage, so I have to sleep inside at least a few times, but I always take the opportunity to go hiking in the forests.”

“Hm”, Aziraphale said again, nodding.

“My kind of vacation, like I say. Not this fancy rubbish, where you throw a lot of money out of the window for someone kneading your back or sitting in stiff clothing on nice chairs and eating snails or whatever some people come up with. I say all those expensive suits and wines are only taking us further away from the human’s true calling.”

He looked at Aziraphale, who stared back blankly.

“Hunting”, Dean supplied and Aziraphale opened his mouth to say something. He decided against it and took the nodding up again. Dean turned the sausages on the grill. “So, what kind of tent do you have?”

“Er…” The angel looked around for someone to help him. As he couldn’t find Crowley anywhere and the children were talking to the cat again, the only solution left was flight.

“You know, I think I have to see what Cro- Anthony is up to.” He excused himself and let Dean standing there, while he hastily walked over to the greenhouse and opened the door to slip inside.  
The second, he entered the greenhouse he was attacked.

“What is this talk about camping, angel?”, Crowley growled while gripping the angel by his collar.

“Sh, sh, if you would please, er”, Aziraphale raised his hand to point his finger over the demon’s shoulder. “Let’s take this conversation behind the flower pots, don’t we?”

Crowley snarled something incomprehensible and let go of the angel’s collar in favor of grabbing him by the hand and dragging him around the bigger plants that shielded the bench and the statue from the entry. Crowley crossed his arms and planted himself next to the statue.

“So, do tell.”

Aziraphale made a point of straightening his collar first.

“I showed you the invitation, you said yes, Adam already knows about it.”

Crowley groaned and threw his arms in the air.

“You mean there is no getting out of it anymore?”

“No.” Aziraphale coughed. “If we would back down now it would irreversible lead to Adam’s disappointment, not understanding why his parents could do anything that cruel to him and probably a completely destroyed summer.” He scrunched up his nose. “I have read quite many books on the topic of ruined childhoods and it might just lead to an early apocalypse.”

“Just what we need”, Crowley retorted sarcastically. He rubbed his forehead and tried to bargain: “Can’t we promise to go to the beach instead?”

“We promised that already for Christmas.”

“Aarrgh.” Crowley turned away and crouched down to look at his plants in solemn. Where once had been a line of tiny tombstones, were now growing dandelions like they were real flowers and not the horrible weed that was famous for staining clothes and causing allergies wherever they went. Crowley didn’t like them. They couldn’t be frightened very easily. Not for one second, he believed they could grant wishes, vicious little buggers. He stood up again and in front of the angel to put his hands on both of his shoulders. “Come on! Camping?”, he almost pleaded. “Really, angel, you can’t be serious.”

Aziraphale sighed.

“Aziraphale? Anthony? The burgers are ready!”, Pam called from outside and the angel and the demon looked at each other in horror.

“Oh begonia, we have to go back out there?”, Crowley swore.

“Or…we could act like we didn’t hear them?”

The demon looked at Aziraphale in surprise. 

“Angel, what a truly fantastic idea, but what if they are coming looking for us?”

“Well…” Aziraphale swallowed. “You know I’ve been watching television and”

“Nothing good coming from it, the only show worthwhile is ‘Golden Girls’.”

Aziraphale glared at Crowley. The demon, his hands were still placed on the angel’s shoulders, avoided eye contact and mumbled something about “well written plot”, then said louder to distract from his own comment:

“What were you watching?”

“I can’t remember, but I found out that the common strategy of distraction in humankind is embarrassing the intruder by openly displayed affection.”

Crowley blinked.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows.

“And?”, Crowley asked.

“They won’t disrupt us if they think we are kissing.”

Crowley threw his arms in the air again. His articulation was always quite expressive. With a swift movement he stood closer to the angel that their noses were almost touching and wrapped his arms around him.

“Geniusss idea, but you could have jussst asssked.”

With a smile Aziraphale leaned in until their lips came together. Somewhere behind him the door to the greenhouse was opened and Dean called:

“Better come or your burgers are getting cold, oh- well I guess, we can, er, we can eat them instead and you get some the next round”, he finished lamely as he saw Aziraphale distractedly waving him away. They heard the door shut again, meaning, their distraction-strategy had been successful. Still, it couldn’t hurt to continue a little like this.


	27. Part 24: Choose your torture

“That is not how I imagined the end of the world”, Aziraphale panted.

“Don’t stop! They will catch us!”, Crowley yelled and nearly bumped into him, after Aziraphale had suddenly stopped to catch his breath.

“But where should we go?”, Aziraphale asked desperately and looked around. They were standing on a dirt road, to both sides nothing but trees and bushes and green and through the clearing of trees the silhouettes of a village on the horizon. They could pretty much go anywhere.  
Shouting filled the air and they turned around. There was an army after them with sticks and shields and the dust swirled around them as they ran towards the angel and the demon. With reluctance they turned around and started running again.

“Next time”, Crowley huffed as he sprang over a big stone on the road, his suit jacket flying in the wind. “we make sure we will be the ones doing the chasing!”

“Next time we won’t let them talk us into this madness!” Aziraphale felt that his human manifestation was not made for such forms of locomotion. He already had sweat running down his forehead and neck. “I at least don’t remember that there was so much running involved with the Spanish Inquisition!”

“I wouldn’t know!”, Crowley shouted as he stepped into a dried-out puddle. He adjusted his sunglasses. “Once I discovered what the Spanish Inquisition was, I had to take a nap first and sleep over it. I never hoped to see it happening again!”

“Well, it isn’t really the Spanish Inquisition”, Aziraphale huffed. “This is the British Inquisition!”

Somewhere behind them the road shuddered under the feet of the British Inquisition, Chief Inquisitor Adam, Witchfinders April, May and Aaron, Head Torturers Eric and June and Junior Torturer Cat, who sprinted a foot of the troop on a leash the Chief Inquisitor was holding.

“Get thee foul witches!”, May, a tiny girl covered in freckles screeched.

“AAAAAAAOOoouurhrruhahhhhaw!”, the war cry of the brave inquisitors filled the forest and a few birds flew startled off. The angel and the demon were fleeing from their persecutors as a frightened squirrel crossed the road and, in an attempt to avoid it the angel stumbled and fell on his nose.

“Aziraphale!”, the demon shouted. He halted and wanted to turn around, but the British Inquisition was already approaching.

“Leave, Crowley! Leave me behind!”, the angel shouted and Crowley put on a determined face.

“Never!”

He rushed to help the angel back on his feet, kneeled down and reached for the angel’s arms. Suddenly, something heavy landed on his back and he lost his balance. The Junior Torturer had been his doom.

“Shit”, he hissed as he fell over and he and the angel tumbled back to the ground.

“The witches art captured!”, someone shouted and the twins threw a net over the ethereal beings lying on the leave-covered ground and the cat that had brought them to fall. Cat hissed as the net covered her and wiggled her tail angrily into Crowley’s face.

“Are you alright, dear?”, the angel asked with his face only centimetres from Crowley’s apart. He was covered in leaves and the shadow of the net fell on his face. Crowley groaned.

 

-//-

 

“I hate camping”, Crowley said as he was tied to a chair.

“Don’t be grumpy, my dear. This is no normal camping. I am sure there are a lot of camping trips that aren’t ambushed by the British Inquisition.”

Crowley glowered at the angel, who was just being tied to a tree that was circled with a row of stones. The Inquisition obviously planned to torture them to find out if they were witches, but so far, the demon could not see how they were planning on doing this. Witchfinders April and May were carrying a bag that was seemingly filled with… something… to the place, while Chief Inquisitor Adam prepared his exorcism.

“Your torture”, someone suddenly said close to the demon and he turned his head to stare into the dark eyes of a small Korean girl. He furrowed his forehead as to what his torture should be. Until now all that they had done to him was attacking him with Cat and tying him to a chair, where he was sitting quite comfortably now. Mind, his capturers weren’t the most thorough of torturers; his ties were much too loose.

“What torture?”, he asked just as he noticed the girl, June, was holding Cat in her arms. Rather unceremonially she let her fall into his lap, where the cat first clawed at the demon’s legs in surprise, then noticed that she knew him and started purring. “Uh heaven, not this again”, he groaned as the animal nestled itself into the form of a croissant and started napping in his lap. “I am still angry at you for betraying me like that, you know”, he told her.

“Thou deserve to be tortured, witch”, June told him.

“I am no witch, you little disaster, let me go! This fury creature will ruin my trousers for sure.”

“No mercy for sinners!”

“But, er”

Well… Crowley shrugged as much as it was possible. He couldn’t well argue with that. It reminded him somehow of the old days. First mistake and you were out, goodbye, Sayonara, Ciao, go look for a job on the other side.

“I may be a sinner, but”, He wiggled his arm free from the rope and pointed a finger at the angel. “But he is not. He may have made some mistakes, but I am against you treating him like a witch when he is obviously an angel.”

Aziraphale blushed and smiled at the demon. Their capturers sniggered.

“Dada!”, Adam groaned. “Don’t embarrass me in front of my friends.”

“What?”, Crowley asked – but it sounded more like “WOT” – and slipped his arm back into his ties.

“Please be gross later, now we have to torture you”, Adam decided and pointed at his Witchfinders that were still holding the suspicious bag. “Torture the witch.”

“Watch how you talk to your parents!”, Aziraphale scolded the boy just as the Witchfinders reached into the bag and started throwing…something at the angel. He tried to flinch away, but was tied to the tree and could only close his eyes as the children threw burdocks at him, tiny green and violet plants that stuck to his clothes and after a while made him look like some sort of forest creature.

“Angel!”, the demon cried.

“It is alright, Crowley! I will survive it!”

“If he survives it, he is a witch!”, Eric decided and nodded proudly at their interpretation of the iron maiden. It wasn’t necessary to lock someone into a cage and poke them with needles, if you could just throw the “needles” or rather burdocks at them.

The throwing of the Witchfinders got less as they ran out of burdocks and a beeping sound disrupted the torturing in the summerly forest. They all looked for the source of the irritating sound and found that it came from Aaron, who was looking down at his wrist watch and pushed around on its buttons.

“It’s time for lunch”, he proclaimed and the other children let all fall their torture instruments.

“Let’s go”, Adam decided and went to collect his cat from his father’s lap. Without untying his parents, they all left the place chattering happily on their way back to the cottage. The demon and the angel stared after them. Then Crowley looked over at the angel and raised his eyebrows demonstrating. His ties fell of him as if an invisible scissor had cut them through and he stood from the chair. He flicked his fingers once and the ties fell off the angel.

“Oh, thank you”, Aziraphale said and straightened himself. He already wanted to walk away to follow the children behind and meet the other parents for lunch, but Crowley held him back by the arm and picked a burdock from Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“You have something there”, he mumbled and kept flicking off burdocks that stuck to the angel’s clothes. “Horrible, this torturing-methods, really.”

Aziraphale blushed and stammered:

“Yeah, well, er, probably not as effective as the methods of the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far”, Crowley mused and bent over to brush the burdocks off the angel’s trousers. The angel tried to balance himself by putting one hand on the tree he had been tied to, but his red face looked like the actual torture had only just begun. “I’d say, even if the two Inquisitions had quite different methods, they were both rather unsuccessful in finding witches.” He straightened up again and gave the angel a once over to make sure he was free of burdocks. “I am just glad Adam adopted a black cat. Can you imagine? The white stains she would leave on my trousers? Horrendous!”

“Yes. Horrendous”, Aziraphale agreed. As the demon didn’t reply anything, he coughed and waved in the direction they had come from. “Shall we.”

“Yeah, lets get back, but no need to hurry if you ask me. I wouldn’t run for a table at the Ritz and I for sure wouldn’t run for a sausage at a barbeque.”

Aziraphale chuckled.

“You know, I once attempted to jog.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows.

“Really, now?”

“Really.” He offered his arm to the demon, who accepted it. Leisurely they wandered through the forest, while the bright sun threw dancing lights through the trees’ crowns and the birds sang. “An awful pastime I tell you, I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Not even for the Ritz?”

“Not even for the Ritz.”

They walked a little in silence, before Crowley asked:

“Not even for sushi?”

Aziraphale contemplated that.

“Maybe I would do a jog for sushi, but only for really good sushi. Like, really good.”

 

-//-

 

“Will you be alright, if I go sleep in the tent with my friends?”, Adam asked as Aziraphale handed him his clothes for the night. He chewed on his lip in anticipation. As discussed Aziraphale and Crowley had packed their and their son’s luggage as July arrived and had driven in the Bentley to the countryside, where Dean and Pam had their little cottage.  
The cottage itself was rather small with only a cosy kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms, but it had a reasonable big garden, where guests could set up their tents and stay for a visit and even have garden parties and barbeques.  
Crowley had only made one more attempt to bribe Adam into cancelling their camping trip by telling him he couldn’t possibly leave Cat behind, which had only resulted in Cat coming along. She was now happily discovering their holiday destination while being constantly on a leash one of them had to supervise.  
Now that it was late in the evening, but the sun was still not set, they had locked Cat into the cottage and Beatrice, Pam’s sister had proposed the children could all sleep in one tent to have a sleepover.

“We will be alright, I promise”, Aziraphale told him and handed him his clothes. Adam took it and played with it rather than putting it on. They sat cross-legged in the cramped tent Crowley had “bought”, while outside the lamps from the cottage illuminated the dusk, and moths and mosquitos were buzzing around the garden.

“Even Dada?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“Even him. Now put your nightclothes on.”

Adam pulled his shirt over his head.

“What if”, he mumbled, but got stuck in his shirt. Aziraphale helped him pull it off and Adam continued, “what if you hear a spooky noise and get scared?”

“If you should hear anything spooky, you can of course, come and check if we are alright.”

“That’s good.” Adam nodded. He scrunched up his face. “But what if I have to stay here then because you are scared without me?”

“Then you can do that.”

“But…”, Adam hesitated and put his pyjama top on. “what if the others think I am staying here because I am scared?”

“Then you tell them, that not you are scared, but your Dada. I am pretty sure they will believe that.”

“Believe what?”, Crowley asked as he stuck his head inside the tent. He had to get down on hands and knees to crawl inside and let himself fall down beside them on one of their sleeping bags. Aziraphale was just happy he had been able to persuade him to exchange his suit for something more suitable for camping in someone else’s garden. Again, he was wearing one of those hideous shirts with giant palm trees all over and waves and sandcastles… Aziraphale’s eyes hurt whenever he only looked at them. 

“Nothing, dear. Adam and I were only talking about spooky noises and that he might come back to our tent if he heard one.”

“Oh”, Crowley looked at the boy, who was peeling his trousers off his legs to change into more comfortable wear for the night. “Well, of course, you don’t even have to wait until you hear something spooky. You can even come back if one of those girls tells you something spooky. That little girl, named after a month”

“They are all named after a month”, Aziraphale interrupted him exasperated.

“Well, then the youngest one of them, or, well, the latest month, whatever, I tell you, she’s the one who knows all the horror stories about ghost and werewolves living in the woods. She probably still plans on performing that exorcism on me.”

Adam snorted.

“Don’t worry, Dada. I told her we perform the exorcism another time. Today you were witches. Witches don’t need no exorcism, just needles and fire and water an such stuff.”

“Well, don’t I feel already much better now”, Crowley replied with dripping sarcasm. Adam didn’t seem to notice. He had finally managed to clothe himself and turned in a circle around himself as Aziraphale sprayed some weird insect spray on him that was supposed to kill mosquitos or at least scare them off. Then Adam went to hug Crowley.

“Good night, Dada.”

“Have a nice sleepover, you little rascal”, the demon replied and hugged him closer. After they let finally go of each other, Adam proceeded to hug Aziraphale, who told him not to fall into dirt, because the insect spray was still fresh and the dirt would probably stick to his skin.

“I won’t fall, Papa”, Adam told him sounding scandalized that Aziraphale would even suggest something like that. He grabbed his bag and made his way out of the tent. The “door” of the tent fell shut and Crowley and Aziraphale were left in the dark with the distant chatter of the children and chirping crickets.

“Well”, Aziraphale said and looked at the demon, who looked a little torn between missing the boy and feeling relieved that he had some quiet again. Crowley stared back blankly. Aziraphale smiled. “Alone again.”


	28. Part 25: The virtues of camping

Lying in a tent in the garden of other people with two other tents only a few meters away, was NOT the definition of “alone”.

Even though, Pam had let the light from the lantern on for everybody that might want to stumble from the tent to the loo in the middle of the night, it was still horribly dark and in such a different way from the city. When you spend most of your life somewhere, where street lanterns are glowing every few meters, neon signs are hanging in and above every shop window and giant billboards are illuminated for the single reason allowing you to read the newest fast food advertisement at every time of the day, you sometimes forget what real darkness looks like.  
Real darkness is not seeing your own nose and the only thing you see are the dancing lights that appear whenever you squeeze your eyes. Then you hold your arms out and stumble forward until you find a wall or something to lean against, but there is nothing. There is just the scrunching sound of grass and leaves and stones under your feet and you could just wander off, over a field, wherever you want, and in the total darkness the world has no end and no beginning and you are the centre, because what else is there.

A pond probably.

With your luck there will be nothing but fields for kilometres, but a single pond right in front of you, when you stumble through the dark. Have fun getting tangled in wet greenery and being devoured by leeches.

 

“What do you think, what leeches taste like?”

Aziraphale turned his head, but could not see anything. He squinted at where he suspected the demon to be, but he still couldn’t make him out. He raised his hand and tried to reach for him.

“Hey, ow, what the heaven, angel?”

“Oh, I do apologize!”, Aziraphale hastily pulled his hand back from whatever he might have touched just now. Something beside him shuffled and suddenly two yellow orbs glowed at him. Aziraphale smiled. “Oh, there you are. I couldn’t see you there, my dear. It is so dark.”

“Quite”, Crowley said and turned again to look back up to the tent. They were silent for a while and listened to the chirping of the crickets.

“What did you say before?”, Aziraphale asked.

“Oh, er, I guess I don’t remember anymore. Er, do you think they have ducks here too?”

“What? Of course, they have ducks here. The countryside is where they originally got all the animals from.”

“I guess you are right, but isn’t it weird? Like, did they just build all those parks and buildings around the ducks or did the ducks move into the city?”

“Did, did you get drunk without me, Crowley?”

“WOT? No, of course not, I guess, well, well I guess, I am just having some strange thoughts.”

Aziraphale contemplated that. There was one cricket that had to be sitting quite close to their tent, because it sounded like it was almost chirping into the angel’s ear. He listened to the calming sound, when suddenly another cricket joined in and the first cricket seemed to get almost competitive. Their music got faster and faster like it they were racing against each other and the angel had to think of one of those ridiculous math tasks that Adam had to do for school, which were the reason they got him a tutor in the first place.  
‘If a dozen violinists can play the symphony in two hours, how long does it take for 24 violinists to play the symphony’, his mind asked. Only when the demon next to him said softly: “What the heaven, angel?”, Aziraphale noticed that his mind had spoken out loud.

“Remember when you first called yourself ‘Anthony’?”, he asked. He heard Crowley mumbling.

“Not sure… I think it was a while ago, at least a hundred years.”

“Well, I guess that could be true, but the first time you mentioned this name to me was during the Second World War.”

Suddenly, Crowley started to chuckle.

“What you laughing about?”

“You remember that? Really?”

“As I recall it, I am not the one having trouble remembering things. You can’t even remember our son’s friends. ‘The girl named after a month’”, Aziraphale mocked the demon a little huffily.

“Oh, come on! He has had that friend for like a day, as if you remember every single name of the people we met yesterday!”

“We met Pam and Dean and their sons Aaron and Eric and Beatrice, who is Pam’s sister and Beatrice’s partner Sam, who already had three children with her divorced husband, two of whom are adopted and yes, they are all named after different months. Now she and Beatrice are raising – I list – April, May and June together.”

“Show-off.”

The chirping had stopped and somehow the silence disturbed the angel. He wondered if the crickets had a reason to suddenly disappear. He shook his head about this ridiculous thought as another cricket started to chirp.

“It’s just that you usually only remember the food we have eaten at our meetings. You know, before The Arrangement changed and we started seeing each other every day. Before that I would ask you ‘Angel, when did I tempt you the last time?’ and you would furrow your brows and then say something like ‘I don’t know, but we had crêpes!’.”

“Please stop talking about crêpes. It will probably be too long until we get anything decent to eat again. ‘Camping’ seems to be a synonym for ‘eating like our ancestors the mighty and brave cavemen’.”

“You know well that cavemen are just a joke by the One Above.”

“Well, they probably didn’t know about crêpes.”

“Doubt it.”

 

“Crowley?”

“Yeah, angel?”

“That’s exactly what I want to ask you about?”

“’bout what?”

“Why do you always call me ‘angel’? I don’t go around calling you ‘demon’.”

There was silence, then

“No particular reassson.”

“Oh, well…”, Aziraphale licked his lips. “It’s just, er, I noticed that people tend to assume certain relations, when you call me like that. I mean, I know, you call me that, because I actually am an angel, but still, you could just call me by my name instead of causing these confusions.”

“What confusionsss?”, the demon asked.

“You know what I am talking about. Implying we have special relations, where you are calling me endearments and making people believe you are using it like they do, when they address a beloved and not an ethereal being from heaven.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, I, er, I got that, but, er, that’sss not what I meant, when I sssaid ‘what confusionsss’, I meant, well, I meant, how isss thisss confusssing anybody, when they already think we are a couple, having children and living together and doing thessse strange public displaysss of affection to dissstract annoying humansss. How isss, of all thingsss, me calling you ‘angel’ the confusssing thing here?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, but he there were no words, and his mind was weirdly blank. No. Not blank. It reminded him somehow of the night sky, seemingly dark, black with this blue glow and once you looked closer more and more stars appeared and just like shooting stars thoughts were rushing through his mind. He wished he could see the stars and not just the dark inside of the tent.

“I guess one could say we are a couple”, he conceded finally and next to him, the demon let out a breath and the angel realized, he must have been holding it. What that meant, he could not even start to interpret, but he did worry about Crowley. He had some moments, where he sometimes seemed to forget breathing wasn’t necessary and spoke just like a snake as if he couldn’t decide if his form was snake, demon or human. But instead of saying anything to that, the angel rather let more words stumble from his tongue:

“Communities to raise children together were quite common in earlier days before the nuclear family became this popular. People would live together with their parents and siblings and their sibling’s spouses and their children and everybody would raise all the children together, so, they were never alone. The two of us raising a child together is really not that strange and I doubt there will be a problem by referring to this new form of The Arrangement to some sort of… relationship. A relationship with a child. The three of us. A…”, He gulped. “…a family.”

Next to him, Crowley moved a little and the angel thought he had to be nodding. When he spoke, only, a tiny “Yeah” he sounded a little choked. Aziraphale crossed his fingers over his chest and started rotating his thumbs around each other. How sad that he couldn’t see the stars.

“I am glad we decided to adopt a child”, he added after the silence got too thick. Crowley started coughing.

“You remember”, the demon answered, but his voice sounded a little rough. He coughed again. “You remember we only did that, because he is literally the Antichrist and going to destroy the world in a few years if we aren’t able to change his mind?”

“Of course, I remember. I just think it is nice that he brought us together like that with all the nice dinner dates and the home-made cooking. Far better than killing him.”

“WHeN wAs KiLliNg Him eVeN aN oPTioN?”, Crowley said outraged and turned to the angel, so, that Aziraphale indeed could see stars now. Two stars inside of their tent. He stared into the demon’s eyes and hastily reassured him that they of course, would NOT kill Adam at this point, because that would be far too complicated.

“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to worry you. There’s no need for that anymore, obviously. I know you got rather attached to him. We both did. Even though, I never thought it possible, now here we are, both loving our son who is also the son of Satan. I really wonder how it all came to this and if it was maybe all meant to be, I”

“Don’t! Please don’t use that horrid word. Ugh, I swear, one day I will end up sick and it will be your fault!”, Crowley interrupted him and let himself fall on his back. The stars disappeared again.

“Whatever do you mean, my dear?”, Aziraphale asked startled.

“You! I mean you!”, Crowley exclaimed and was probably gesticulating wildly with his arms. “Walking around, talking about loving sushi and people and calling your beloved endearments, uh. I mean I am fine in using the term ‘love’ talking about my car and maybe good music or good wine, but I don’t think we should go around talking about humans like that. It, it is just such a human thing to do.”

“Ah, but you and I aren’t humans, are we?”

“No, that’s exactly what I am getting at. We shouldn’t try to imitate humans, we”

“So, hypothetically, saying I love you wouldn’t be ‘talking about humans’, because you are no human and neither is Adam.”

“I”

And Crowley really wanted to answer. He really, really wanted to answer this very hypothetical suggestion Aziraphale had made and he felt the angel’s eyes burning into him as he was not, no, really not trying to find a way on how to get out of this embarrassing situation talking about feelings. Hypothetical feelings of course, hypothetical feelings in a hypothetical situation that had no real or practical value, but were merely ground for a theoretical discussion on semantics.  
Is an ethereal being using the word “love” to describe their relationship with another ethereal being using human terms and therefore, acting human themselves? Or is it inherently impossible for ethereal beings to be anything other than themselves and can therefore do nothing that is solely human?  
An important discussion that Crowley would love to contribute his part to. He opened his mouth to just do exactly that, very eloquently

“I, er, I mean, you know, what can I even”

as something crashed from outside against the tent and caused it to collapse above their heads. Startled the demon and the angel tried to get up and fight their way out of the dark that was wrapped around them. The darkness was fighting back.

“OH MY DOLPHIN’S TROUSERS WE ARE BEING ATTACKED!”, Crowley shouted as something scratched his back and he tried to jump, but was still caught in the fabric of the tent. He scrabbled to find a way out.

“Crowley? Crowley, where are you? What is happening?”

Crowley’s hand reached something that felt like grass and a warm summer breeze brushed over his fingers. He triumphed silently as he found the way out of the tent, but continued to swear out loud.

“Beelzebub’s sneakers and buzzing bees, what kind of hell is this?”

He finally managed to crawl out of the tent and was suddenly face to face with another demon. Two bright eyes glowed at him and Crowley raised his eyebrows.

“Crowley, are you alright?”, Aziraphale’s muffled voice asked from inside the tent and Crowley turned his head to see the angel finding his own way out.

“It was the damn cat”, Crowley told him. The angel propped himself up on his elbows and they were lying side by side in the dry grass with their lower halves still inside the collapsed tent. The angel’s eyes got wide as he saw Cat sitting just in front of the demon, who was trying to reach for its leash.

“How did she get out of the cottage?”, he asked.

“Heaven do I know, but the nasty beast must have jumped against the tent or something.”

“Dada? Papa? What happened?”, Adam suddenly called and they turned to see the boy emerging from his own tent. All the kids trailed after him and came to look at the collapsed tent and the two adults lying underneath it. A few of them started snickering while the others stared with wide eyes. Crowley hastily conjured a pair of sunglasses into his hand to shield the children from his eyes. He then managed to catch the cat; so, it wouldn’t run away again. He handed it to Adam.

“Your cat’s what happened”, he told the boy. Adam looked down at his pet and scolded it:

“Bad Cat.”

“Oh my, what happened here?”, someone else called and they all turned to look at the woman stepping out from the cottage. It was Beatrice. Her eyes fell on Adam and the cat; and she put a hand over her mouth. “Oh! Was that my fault? I am sorry, I only went to the loo and must have accidently let the cat out. Is everything alright?”

Crowley sighed and let his head sink face first down into the grass.

“Everything is alright, dear! No worries!”, the angel called, while the children were still cackling like this was the funniest thing in the world. Crowley groaned for being rescued from a very awkward conversation by a cat, just to find himself in another, very different, but still very humiliating situation. Camping. Leave civilization behind to get attacked by wild animals when you least expect it.


	29. Part 26: Adults are obliged to participate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are again and the camping is still going on!  
> I have just too many ideas for this topic and I announced it for weeks in the earlier chapters before it actually happened so,...
> 
> Hope you like it ^^

Aziraphale does not sleep.

This was one of the biggest issues back when Crowley and Adam had moved into his bookshop. The bookshop was in fact just that: a bookshop. Sure, it had its little kitchenette and a toilette somewhere that was actually supposed to be for customers, but like every other surface it was covered in books. As there was almost no moving space, there was certainly no living space, because the angel just kept on buying and collecting new books over the centuries with selling like... one and a half per year.

As Aziraphale was no human and had therefore, no need for a human’s bathroom activities and sleeping practices, he had been just fine without that. But his store had in no means been fit to serve as the home of a family of ethereal beings that lived undercover and pretended to be humans. It was already complicated enough to tell all the people from outside; teachers, parents, schoolfriends and so on; that they were a normal family, but on top of that they had to make ADAM believe they were a normal family. This had just gotten harder with every visit the boy had made to other people’s houses noticing tiny details that didn’t match with what he knew from home. Often, he came home from his friend Billy to ask difficult questions like

“Why do other children have grandparents and I don’t?”

or

“Billy has all these weird holes in the wall and when I asked him about them, he said they were there to make the lamps shine and the telly go on. Why don’t we have these holes in the wall? Don’t our lamps need these holes, too?”

or

“Dada, why don’t you have a razor or a beard?”

or

“Papa, you remember when I made the bathroom sink flow over and you made the water go back into the tap? Billy’s mum can’t do that.”

or that one time, when he came back from a sleepover

“When we woke up, we wanted to ask Billy’s parents if we could watch something on the telly, but they were both sleeping. Why don’t you ever sleep? Do you only sleep, when I am not looking?”

And it was getting more and more difficult to find answers to these questions the older the boy got.  
So, when Crowley and Adam had moved in with Aziraphale, what they had done was simply to purchase the apartment connected to the back of bookstore and arrange private rooms to raise the boy and, well… more books, but there had still been space for a bathroom, a playroom, a bedroom which seemed to be the important accommodations humans expected to be there.

So, there was – as a matter of fact – a bed for Aziraphale to sleep in.

Which he never did, but instead sit all night in one of his armchairs and read in one of his books.

Crowley slept in the bed. Not that he needed to, but he had discovered this certain hobby centuries ago and had grown used to it. He had cultivated it. He took a nap like the counterpart of the princess on the pea: he could sleep anywhere and did not even need one single mattress for it.  
Oh sure, he always took the time to change into some fancy silk night wear and put on a sleep mask instead of his sunglasses, but from there it was just a matter of chance where he fell asleep. More than one time when Aziraphale had walked with a book in his hands, he had accidentally fallen over a stretched out body behind the kitchen table; or pulled aside the shower curtain just to find the demon sleeping in the bath tub; and sometimes the angel spent an eternity looking for the demon just to find that he had exceptionally fallen asleep in the bedroom.

Then there had been the times they had stayed at a hotel, because they had taken Adam on vacation and while Aziraphale had sat in the bed reading, Crowley would snore away next to him without a care in the world.

So, no. Aziraphale did not sleep.  
Even now, in the middle of the night after they had carried the cat back into the cottage and told the children to go to sleep into their tent, he was laying on his stomach and reading under the light of a small lantern. The crickets were chirping and a demon was clinging to him while mumbling softly in his sleep. At least it was not as hot as during the day.

“Whada weird duck”, Crowley murmured in his sleep and pressed his face into Aziraphale’s side. Aziraphale turned the page in his book and read on about Miss Marple solving one of her crimes. Not her own crimes of course, even if that would have been hilarious.  
Something cracked outside the tent and Aziraphale squinted his eyes in suspicion to find out if that cursed cat was strolling around again. There was another crack, a whisper:

“Papa?”

“Adam?”

“Can I come inside the tent?”

“Of course”, Aziraphale answered and put the book aside to open the zipper of the tent. As soon as the opening was big enough, Adam crawled inside and flopped down on his bottom. His eyes fell on the demon and he started giggling. He hastily put his hands over his mouth as not to wake his parent.

“Dada is wearing his funny sleep mask”, he whispered to the angel that was closing the tent again with some difficulty as he could not move too far, because he was still held down by the sleeping demon.

“He looks funny, doesn’t he?”, he replied to his son, but didn’t dare looking at the sleep mask with the cat eyes painted on them. They looked just way too funny to not laugh at them. “Did you get scared?”, he asked to change the topic. Adam looked down at his hands and mumbled:

“I was worried you were scared.”

“Of course, of course, that’s what I meant, I am sorry, my dear”, Aziraphale hastily corrected himself. “Are you here, because you are worried your Dada might have a nightmare?”

Adam shook his head.

“I am worried Dada might get scared by the monsters in the forest.”

“What monsters?”

“Big green ones?”

Aziraphale nodded solemnly.

“They are quite worrying, aren’t they?”

Adam nodded and Aziraphale sighed. He patted the space next to him and said:

“Well, you can always stay here and protect us. We are certainly glad for that. Do you want your sleeping bag?”

“Yeah, thanks, Papa”, Adam said and scrambled to pull the sleeping bag under himself. He pulled the zipper and squeezed himself inside like someone trying to squeeze tooth paste back into the tube. Aziraphale’s eyes hurt and he wondered if it came from the reading in the bad light. Ignoring the shuffling to both sides of him he continued reading. Sometimes he glanced to the boy, but he had soon fallen asleep and Aziraphale doubted he had gotten much sleep in the tent with all the other children. His book was captivating. Just as Miss Marple was faced with a masked man with a gun, Crowley threw an arm and a leg over the angel’s back and Aziraphale really could not stop reading at that point. He just had to let himself be cuddled.

 

-//-

 

In the morning, Aziraphale was grumpy, because he had only brought the one book.  
He had pondered to read it a fourth time, but instead he had turned to lie on his back, his arms crossed over his chest in discontentment and slowly melted into the embrace of a very clingy demon. Someone pulled the zipper of the tent up with as much violence as possible and a tiny head appeared inside the tent to yell:

“BREAKFAST!”, then the head disappeared and pulled the zipper back up again. Feet were walking or hopping around in the garden, making the ground they lay on tremble. Many voices were talking, shouting in the garden and some meowing and warning not to touch the waffles. The demon stirred and was probably awake, but it was hard to tell with his sleep mask on. He snuggled his face once more into the angel’s side and mumbled through a yawn:

“Good morning.”

“It is a morning”, Aziraphale agreed a little grumpily, but then got softer. “My dear”, he said and pressed a kiss on the demon’s forehead.

“Ah stop with your pleasantries, angel, not so early in the morning”, Crowley protested, but did not let go of Aziraphale either. He really did not want to wake up, get up and have to face his troubles with; on the one hand, being close to the angel and; on the other hand, actually admitting it with words and confessions. He rather kept on dreaming about ducks with tails that were fighting with dolphins that wore suits while riding waves in the ocean. Truly, dreaming was still the best invention humans ever made.

“Do we get up?”, Adam asked and yawned too. He attempted to peel himself out of the sleeping bag and Crowley pulled the sleep mask from his face. He decided, the moment their son was up, they better got up themselves. So, he entangled himself from the angel and searched for his sunglasses. Once Adam had finally managed to free himself from the sleeping bag, he wasted no time changing into proper clothes, but pulled the zipper from the tent and crawled outside.

“Come on, let’s follow him”, the angel said and waved the demon to leave the tent too.

“But I am not wearing my suit”, the demon protested.

“Even better.”

 

-//-

 

They had set a large table on the veranda in front of the cottage with all the children seated around it and stuffing their faces with all the different kinds of food presented for breakfast. Pam, Beatrice and Sam were still traveling back and forth between the kitchen and the table to bring all the food and refill the orange juice or make tea, coffee, while Dean was sitting in between the children and tried to read his newspaper in peace he did not deserve.

“Do you need any help in the kitchen?”, Aziraphale asked as Pam hurried by.

“Oh, no, but would you help the little ones cutting their food? June only eats her fruits if they are cut in slices”, she said and hurried off to the kitchen again. Aziraphale threw Crowley a look. The demon looked sullen and was still trying to stuff his hands in his trouser pockets but kept forgetting he was only wearing shorts and a black shirt, both without pockets. Aziraphale was rather smug that his own pyjama had not only pockets in the trousers, but a breast pocket too; and also, little bookworms on the fabric.

“Yeah, yeah, I am on it”, the demon said. “Which one is June?”

“The girl that wants to exorcise you.”

Crowley huffed and turned to the table to squeeze a chair next to the little black-haired girl. Aziraphale then hurried to follow Pam into the kitchen against her protests, because he knew he was meant to just be helpful instead of offering help while already sitting down. In the kitchen they made him carry the cutlery and cups to the table, which was a never ending back and forth between:

“Does everyone have a knife?”

“Literally everyone has a knife, where are the spoons?”

“Whatever do you need a spoon for?”

“The coffee?”

“The coffee, the coffee, the spoons” and hurrying back into the kitchen to ask for the spoons, just to bring the wrong ones, the table spoons; the important information getting lost in translation.

 

-//-

 

“Is ‘Crawly’ your real name?”, asked June before stuffing her mouth with apple slices. Crowley did not look up from slicing the other half of the apple and replied.

“It’s Crowley. Anthony J Crowley.”

“Anthony Chicory?”, June asked after she had chewed and swallowed her apple slice.

“Crowley. It is just Crowley and just a J. The J and the Crowley do not belong together. No Chicory there. It is a middle name.”

“Your middle name is J?”

“Well no, it is, er”

“What does the J stand for?”, the girl on Crowley’s other side asked with interest. Crowley blinked at her. He opened his mouth, searched for a name, a name with J, there got to be a name with J… the little girl’s eyes were staring right into his soul. He shuddered and said lamely:

“Janthony.”

“Janthony Chicory?”, June asked.

“NO”, the other girl said. “Anthony Janthony Crawly.”

“Crowley”, Crowley said, because that was the part of his name that needed correction.

“Dada?”, someone interrupted their conversation and Crowley turned to see Adam standing behind him with an orange in his hands. The orange looked like it was the victim of a massacre with knife wounds all over and the boy’s hands were dripping with orange juice.

“Were you trying to make your own juice?”, Crowley asked and Adam shook his head.

“I can’t get it open. The peel is too hard.”

“Let me see.”

“Coffee anyone?”, Aziraphale asked and stood helplessly with the pot in his hands and looked around on the table, where only children and Crowley were seated as Dean had left to visit the loo or whatever. The cat that was tied with its leash to one of the table legs meowed.

“Here”, Crowley said and held his cup up while still holding the damaged orange in the other hand.

Aziraphale fought his way over to the demon.

“Thank you, angel”, Crowley said, after Aziraphale poured him some coffee.

“Pam said, later we will make a crafting table.”

“Whatever”, Crowley said and put the cup down to scratch at the orange that really was hard peel. Later he would think, this was the moment. This had been the moment to put his foot down and say that he was against the idea of a crafting table.

 

-//-

 

The adults were not excused from the crafting table. The adults had to help.

“I miss Billy. I am going to make him a dragon”, Adam said and started folding the green paper while looking at the instructions from the book. While origami usually only included folding paper, the Antichrist’s technique was a little more advanced and included scissors and glue. Lots of glue.

“You have only seen him last week”, Crowley guessed while picking tiny pieces of paper from Adams checks that got stuck there. He was not completely sure when Adam and Billy had last seen each other, but the way they always stuck to each other, he guessed it could not have been that long.

“Yeah, but a week is very long”, Adam said and sighed with the emotional weight of a person that had lived a heavy life and knew what they were talking about. Crowley raised his eyebrows and then twitched in surprise as someone put a hand down on the table just in front of his face.

“Do you want make something too, Anthony?”, a woman with a blonde ponytail asked him and without waiting for his reply she put down masses of crafting materials in front of him together with instruction books about origami, designing cards and making jewellery. “I think you would have fun”, the woman, Sam, said and turned to the child sitting a little down the table. “Put the scissor down!”, she yelled, before the girl could hurt herself or her neighbour.

“Look!”, Adam said to get his father’s attention back and pulled on his arm. Crowley turned and was faced with a great green lettuce made of paper. “What is this?”, Adam asked him.

“A dragon, obviously”, Crowley said, remembering what his son had told him earlier. Adam smiled and looked proudly at his creation. Crowley imagined what a world looked like with Adam as its Antigod and had to laugh at all the deformed and misshapen creatures.

“Can you make me a boat?”, Adam asked.

“A boat?”

“Yeah, so we can let it swim in the river in the forest.”

“Let me see”, Crowley said and pulled the book about origami on his lap to search for the right instructions. After some browsing, he paused and stared at one of the pages.

“That’s not a boat”, Adam said and scrunched up his nose.

“No”, Crowley agreed. “But we will make this anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ending with a cliffhanger today: oh no
> 
> See ya next week!


	30. Part 27: What is happening?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there!
> 
> So I know obviously that it is not Saturday yet, but I am leaving very early in the morning to go on a holiday somewhere in the mountains, like, don't ask me, I am not the organizer or whatever I am just coming along having no clue whatsoever. So, I did not want to risk having no wifi on Saturday and that's why I am posting my new chapter today!
> 
> So a chapter today, NO chapter on Saturday, then the next chapter next week like normal and so on...
> 
> Remember, last it ended with a CLIFFHANGER! (oooh so dramatic)
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter ^^

“Can you make me a boat?”, Adam asked and put his crafted dragon-lettuce aside as to not damage it in his creative process. The table that had earlier been covered under breakfast food had – almost without being empty in between – transitioned to being covered under crafting materials. All the children were seated around the table and working on drawings, paper planes or jewellery, while the parents prevented them from gluing their eyes shut or cutting off their fingers. Dean was staring disgruntled at his newspaper, which was displaying many tiny holes where pictures and letters were supposed to be.  
Aziraphale in the meantime, was engrossed in one of the books about origami and reading up on this topic.

“A boat?”, Crowley asked.

“Yeah, so we can let it swim in the river.”

“Let me see”, Crowley said and pulled the book about origami into his lap to search for the right instructions. After some browsing, he paused and stared at one of the pages.

“That’s not a boat”, Adam said and scrunched up his nose.

“No”, Crowley agreed. “But we will make this anyway.”

“What?”, Adam asked incredulous. “But I want to make a boat!”

“Don’t worry, we will make a boat afterwards. Alright?”

Adam seemed to mull it over in his head. He chewed on his lip, then nodded.

“Alright.”

 

-//-

 

“Angel?”, Crowley called, while sitting sideways on his chair and looking over to the angel, who was still engrossed in his literature. Crowley shook his head softly and then got up to walk over to him.  
“Angel”, he said again, this time directly into Aziraphale’s ear.

“Yes, my dear?”, Aziraphale answered a little dazed being pulled out of his thoughts, and turned to the demon, almost bumping their noses together. “Did you know that there’s an ancient Japanese legend that says if you fold one thousand cranes you will be granted a wish?”

“Seems like a lot of cranes”, Crowley replied lightly without moving away. “What more have you found out?”

Aziraphale smiled.

“The largest number of origami cranes that was ever created was at the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. 250,000 paper cranes were folded there and each of them had a person’s name on it with a peaceful message. The paper cranes fungate as a symbol for world peace.”

“Talk origami to me”, Crowley breathed.

Nuzzling the demon’s nose Aziraphale whispered back:

“Traditional origami uses a square piece of paper and does not permit any cutting.”

Crowley had to laugh and looked over to where the kids were still working that paper.

“Then Adam is doing it wrong”, he said and watched as Adam was showing of his lettuce-dragon. He let the other children guess what it was. Sadly, they did not have the same luck as Crowley, but much more creative ideas. One of the twins guessed it was a pirate ship, while the oldest of the three girls guessed it was the tower from Rapunzel and the smallest girl, the one that wanted to exorcise Crowley, guessed it was a moss monster; therefore, she was the closest. The demon and the angel shared a look and Aziraphale nodded solemnly.

“No, no, no!”, Adam cried all worked up. “Look at it! Look closer!”, he told the other children and suddenly the lettuce-dragon unfolded itself and developed not only a tail and four legs, but also a maw full of sharp teeth that could give you real paper cuts. Crowley and Aziraphale watched in alarm as the children that surrounded him gasped surprised and crowded together to get a better look at the tiny dragon in Adam’s hands. The Antichrist himself looked just as surprised as them.

“Oh, crocheted spaghetti”, Crowley blessed and then raised his voice in desperation. “Adam! Adam, er, er, are you having fun with the origami?”

Adam reacted to his own name and a few of the children looked up.

“Origami is fun, right?”, Crowley asked again with a forced smile. Adam looked at him with big confused eyes like a little lost puppy, then he stared back down at the small dragon and gasped.

“Does this happen every time?”, he asked excitedly.

“Er, yeah”, Crowley replied, who was only glad that the dragon had at least stayed paper and not turned into real flesh. “Origami is magic, you know?”

“Oh!”, Aziraphale exclaimed. “I know something about magic.” He put the book he was reading aside. Before Crowley registered what was happening, the angel got up and skipped over to the children.

“Wait, what? No! Angel! No magic! Did you hear me? No magic!”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, my dear!”, Aziraphale called back and already held his hand behind Adam’s ear to miracle a coin out of it.

“Wooooooow!”, Adam exclaimed in awe and reached for the coin.

“You see! That’s real magic right here and you can do it, too!”, Aziraphale told Adam excitedly and looked between the other children crowded around him. “Has anyone of you done some origami?”

Half a dozen hands shot up and chaos broke out as all the children tried to grab their creations. Crowley realized that lettuce is a common sickness in children’s origami. Aziraphale looked at the creations they showed him and then plucked a yellow lettuce from one of the girls’ hands.

“What do we have here?”, he asked in his magician-voice that Crowley loathed so much.

“Beauty and the beast! Beauty and the beast!”, the girl screeched while jumping up and down and clapping with her hands.

“Oh, a princess”, Aziraphale guessed as he might not have seen any Disney movies, but sure as heaven had read all existing fairy tales. He told Adam to open his hands and placed the yellow lettuce in them. “Now carefully close your hands around it and then I show you how to make the origami magic work.”

Adam did as he was told and did not even dare to make another move, but instead stared up at the angel with big eyes, every now and then glancing back at the dragon sitting on the table. He was obviously still surprised by how amazing origami was despite the books on the table not telling him anything about that.

“Now put your hands to your lips. Look, like I do it”, Aziraphale told the boy and Adam put the globe he formed with his hands around the yellow lettuce to his lips and Crowley watched with an incredulous expression as Aziraphale told the Antichrist to gently blow into his hands as to breathe life into the origami deformation. Aziraphale said some of his magic words he picked up from his books and as Adam opened slowly his hands again all the children around him watched in fascination as the lettuce unfolded itself just like the dragon and something that resembled a princess in a giant yellow gown appeared.

“Woooooooow”, the children said again and Adam stared at the origami with wide eyes.

“Gimme gimme”, the girl that made the yellow lettuce said and held her hands out to get the princess. Adam handed the figure to her. Crowley rubbed his face and tried to figure out what was happening.

“What’s happening?”, a cheery blonde woman asked and Crowley turned to her.

“I wish I knew.”

“Owww”, she said and started petting his head. “I know it’s hard to be a dad, but don’t worry! Whenever your son is getting too difficult, you can take a time out and instead look after the cat.” Then she handed him the leash. “She’s been trying to shit into my bag for the last few minutes. Take her for a walk”, she said and Crowley realized he was dealing with a woman that had just escaped the horror of a cat shitting all over her mobile phone, purse and other stuff. He still scowled; and as she walked away, called after her:

“You could’ve just moved the bag away!”

“You could have just found a cat-sitter like we did with our aquarium! No need to be extra and bring you cat on a leash!”, Sam called back. Growling Crowley corrected his hair and glared down at the cat, that was rubbing against his bare legs.

“I hope your cat-sitter eats all your fish!”, Crowley retorted and the discussion would have continued, if there had not been sudden cry from the crafting table. He looked over to the crafting table, where the angel and the Antichrist had been creating a world with less misshapen origami figures. One of the girls had overheard the demon and her mother talking about the fish and had started crying at the thought that her little Goldie might have already died at home. Aziraphale had shushed Crowley and Sam had to calm the girl down. They had to call their fish-sitter to make sure, they were all still alive and Crowley wanted to sassily comment that this was exactly the reason they brought Cat along, but Aziraphale had forbidden him to fight about an animal’s life when children were in earshot.  
They had calmed the girl down; she was given the phone to talk to her fish and Sam reminded him that he had some cat-walking to do.  
Pam, who had not been part of the conversation and; therefore, was not in on the joke, entered the garden and asked:

“Anthony is going to catwalk?”

She sounded way to exited at the prospect, so Crowley had to take Cat’s leash and run.

 

-//-

 

Cat really liked going for walks.  
She really enjoyed it, but it could not just be any kind of walk. No. Cat was the type of person – if she had been a person – that was only satisfied if she could do extreme walks, with jumping over creeks, dashing through bushes and climbing up trees. Crowley was either out of breath during their walk or he stood next to a tree with the leash that lead up to the crown of the tree in hand and waited for Cat to give up the squirrel hunt and come back down.

“Adam hasn’t trained you well enough”, he told Cat as she sat on a high branch and tried to creep up to a bird that was clearly only fucking with her; sitting there, grooming its feathers and pretending not to notice the cat on the leash behind him.

Crowley put a hand on his hip and looked around trying to be nonchalant about the fact that he looked like a crazy person that had put a leash around a tree since that’s all that the pedestrians around him could see. In an attempt to avoid falling into another creek, he had dragged cat away from nature and down into the village, where people were watering their gardens, doing their shopping, sitting on benches, talking, reading and being all normal. An older man walked up the street with an own leash in his hand. The leash was attached to a tiny dog, sniffing on grass, fences and other people’s legs. Crowley tried to look occupied, but the man had already seen him and they accidently made eye contact. Crowley blessed under his breath and turned his back to the man, seemingly very interested in the trunk of the tree.

“Good day there, young man”, the voice of an elder man said and Crowley blessed again. As the man clearly could not just mind his own business, but was instead shuffling around like a nosy minded citizen and letting his dog sniff around Crowley’s feet that stuck as always in his… snake…. shoes… he was wearing… shoes… that were clearly… made out of… well, snake. So, well, the dog was sniffing around Crowley and Crowley was wearing… snake… on his feet, but was only wearing this horrible extension of what the white man on Hawaii wears on his legs, which were shorts with palm trees and dolphins on them and with that he wore – thank someone – not also a Hawaiian shirt, but a simple black shirt.  
With a scrunched-up nose Crowley lifted his leg, just as the dog was about to lift his own leg and stepped away from the little dachshund, never going too far away from the tree as to not tear the cat down from the tree in a horrible accident. 

“Out with the dog?”, the man asked and Crowley looked between him and his dog in confusion.

No? Clearly not, he thought to himself and kept walking in backward circles to flee from the dachshund that was following him with interest. The man meanwhile followed the leash with his eyes and tracked it down to the cat sitting on the branch above him still trying to sneak up to some bird.

“Your dog is trying to kill a bird”, the man told Crowley and Crowley opened his mouth. He opened his mouth and… he had to think a while on that, because he did not really need to be somewhere right now. He had nothing on his mind. He had nothing to do. He was an ethereal being under the cover of a British man, middle-aged, wearing his Hawaiian shorts without being on holiday on Hawaii, being on Holiday! yes, granted, he was on a holiday, but somewhere nowhere in England and not on Hawaii and he was out walking his son’s cat on a leash. It seemed like he had to make conversation. “Little conversation”, like Aziraphale called it, “small talk”, like normal people called it.

“Er”, Crowley said and shook his head. “No, no, don’t, er, don’t worry, the bird is smarter than my ca- my dog, it will fly away.”

The man squinted his eyes at him.

“I am really concerned about the extinction of our wonderful native birds. I tell you, back in my days we woke up every day from the singing of the birds alone, but today there are just not enough of them around anymore. This really concerns me.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes wondering, if there had been a ‘back in my days’ whose days it was now.

“I see”, he said eventually.

“You young people probably don’t know about this, but a lot has been different in the old days.”

“Yeah…” Crowley glanced around. “The old days…”

“I need to ask you to discourage your dog from eating our birds.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows.

“Whose birds?”

The man raised his eyebrows too and started stuttering a little.

“Ou-our birds.”

“Who is ‘us’?”

“I am speaking as the chairman of the Tadfield Neighbourhood Watch and; therefore, collectively for all the residents of this wonderful little town.”

“Chairman?”

“Yes.” The man straightened himself and his moustache bristled a little. “I am R. P. Tyler, Chairman of the Tadfield Neighbourhood Watch.”

A bird shrieked, then something flattered off from the tree and a few leaves fell down. Something sounding like a bear climbed down the tree and Cat saw the dachshund and the dachshund saw Cat and Cat let her yellow eyes gleam and the dachshund estimated his chances and concluded retreat was the best solution. He hid behind the elder man’s legs and Cat sat down into the grass like a queen on a thrown.  
Crowley grinned at the man.

“R. P., huh?”, he said. “I have some initials, too.”

A woman with a really large dog walked by and caught Cat’s attention. She recognized a challenge and pulled on the leash to chase the dog. Crowley saw his chance to escape the little conversation.

“I have to go, you know how dogs are”, he told the man and let himself be pulled away. The man stared after him and eventually murmured:

“That is a cat.”

 

-//-

 

Crowley and Cat met up with the others coincidentally on their way back to the cottage as Aziraphale, Pam, Sam, Beatrice and the kids were just about to leave the cottage to go somewhere. So, Crowley just kind of walked up to them and was like:

“Angel! Didn’t know you were around here!”

And Aziraphale was like:

“Oh dear, why are your feet so wet? Did you fall into the river?”

And Crowley had to lie and say yes, because he did not want to admit that Cat had dragged him through a tiny, tiny creek he had not managed to just jump over, but stepped in with both feet instead. He might have to admit he fell into something wet, but at least he could pretend it had been something big and mighty like a wild river.

“Yeah, Cat fell in and I had to rescue her.”

“Why is Cat dry then?”

“Where are you all going?”, Crowley smoothly changed the subject and Aziraphale explained that they were just on their way over to the creek, where they wanted to let their paper boats float and Crowley and Cat should join them. Crowley scowled upon meeting his old rival – creek – but did not protest. They walked in companionable silence, half listening to Beatrice telling her sister how life was, because they saw each other not nearly enough and they had to catch up. Dean and his son Aaron were pretending to be on the hunt, walking with sticks and pretending they were weapons, while June found an earthworm and showed it around to the other children, who were less excited about it and ran away screaming. Cat was behaving exemplarily and only tried to chase a falling leave once.

“I saw your little present”, Aziraphale suddenly said with a sly smile, winking at Crowley like they were part of some conspiracy. Crowley looked around in confusion and then blinked back, but in his style – so more like he had something stuck in his eye.

“What are you talking about, angel?”, he asked as Aziraphale only smiled brighter at him.

“Adam showed me the origami you two made for me.”

“Oh.” Crowley blushed. “Er, yeah, I mean, er, I wanted to show it to you earlier, but then I had to walk the cat and, er, well, do you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Oh. Well, er, I am ssso glad.”

“I am just not sure what it is supposed to be…”

“I am ssso sssorry”, Crowley apologized immediately as he felt horrible to have failed in his attempt to give the angel a humble present, something with a value and meaning only the two of them understood.

“No, it is perfect”, Aziraphale protested with reddened cheeks. He really did not want to embarrass the demon in this topic, but he did not know any smoother way to ask. “but… is it a swan? Adam showed me the instructions and they were supposed to result in a swan, but”

“I know what you mean, er, I changed it a little bit and…”

“And?”

“It’sss a duck. It’sss sssupposssed to be a duck.”

“Oh, dear! How sweet of you!”

Crowley wanted to protest, wanted to say that he was anything but sweet, but then Aziraphale kissed him on the cheek and he forgot about it.

 

-//-

 

“By the way”, Aziraphale said as they watched the paper boats float. “Adam said he wants to become a magician.”

“WOT?”


	31. Part 28: Why

“Finally,”, Crowley said in relieve as he pulled the Bentley into the parking lot in front of the bookstore. He pushed the car door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk and directly into the personal space of a woman in a flower dress, loop earrings and a smile that was frozen in the mode “crazy”.

“So, you are back.” Susan’s smile was way too bright to be sincere and Crowley wished she would step away to make him leave her personal space, but she would not budge. Like a shadow she tried to tower over him despite being only the same height. Crowley feared he was about to be killed like a rat in the streets; so, he had to turn around and usher the angel and the Antichrist back into the car.

“Get back into the car, Adam. This woman means trouble.”

“Oh, what fun you are, Anthony! Do not worry, I merely wish to speak to your husband”, Susan said bittersweetly.

“Didn’t we forget to buy something from the supermarket?”, Aziraphale asked the demon cowedly, but Susan just laughed at him. The angel sensed it was time to flee. Adam peaked with interest out of the car.

“Oh, you think you can escape from me?”, Susan asked.

“Hi, aunt Susan!”

“Hi, Adam”, she said suddenly sweetly. “Why don’t you come over and play a little with Billy? He has missed you so much.”

“Okay! Can I?”, the boy asked his parents, who merely nodded weakly. Adam grabbed his backpack and ran off to the building next to the bookstore and rang the doorbell. The door was opened a little while later by a man with a severe sunburn and Adam ran past him without any greeting, shouting for his best friend. Susan turned her attention back to the two ethereal beings being halfway in and out the car and looking up at her in fear. Now that their son was held hostage they could not just run away from this woman.

“I’ve waited for this for two weeks. Well, no. Even longer, but when I wanted to tell you, you were gone for your little camping trip and left me hanging in the air with my revenge. But now you are finally back”, she said with a heavy sound of self-satisfaction in her voice, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Zira? Remember when you told me a boy just needed a puppy to grow up healthy. Well, well, well, don’t you want to see what I have here?” Then she pulled out a photo from one of her dress’s pockets and held it in front of the angel’s face.  
Aziraphale squinted his eyes and looked at the picture. Crowley leaned in and raised his eyebrows.

“Who’s that?”, the demon asked.

“My son”, Susan replied sharply.

“I meant the hairy one”, Crowley replied and grinned, because he had a death wish. Susan smirked at him and told him very sweetly:

“Oh, thank you for noticing. That’s the dog we got our boy, because a boy just needs a puppy to have a healthy childhood, someone once told me. You know what would be funny? If we – that means you, Aziraphale and me – COULD TAKE OUR DOGS FOR WALKS TOGETHER! WE COULD GO TO THE DOG PARK TOGETHER, HAVE DOG DATES LIKE WE HAD PLAY DATES! WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

Aziraphale’s mouth turned into a thin line and he only got more disgruntled as the demon turned to him and whispered:

“I think she is being sarcastic.”

“Yes, thank you. I noticed that.”

“So, tell me”, Susan repeated in a less shouty voice. “Where is your dog?”

Just this moment, the cat that had been sleeping peacefully on the backseat awakened and immediately emerged from the car seat to jump out of the car. Aziraphale was only just able to catch the leash with his hands and hold the cat back from running between the feet of a surprised passer-by. Susan had still her arms crossed in front of her chest and looked down at the little black demon, shaking her head and making “ts ts” sounds with her clicking tongue. The cat hissed at all three of them for being held back and tried to fight the leash.

“A fine dog, you got there”, Susan said and put her hands on her hips. Then she just threw her hands in the air and started laughing like a mad person, repeatedly wheezing the words “a cat, a boy needs a cat, they got him a cat” and walking away leaving them behind in the parking lot. Crowley watched as Aziraphale squinted his eyes and made a fist as if he was about to punch something, or maybe bite into his hand to prevent himself from swearing.

“You’ve been reading books about parenthood again, haven’t you?”, the demon asked rhetorically.

“You be quiet.”

They got out of the car for real, got their suitcases and collected Adam’s toys from the backseat. Then they brought everything inside and went over to Susan’s with their cat on the leash to meet Billy’s new puppy.

 

-//-

 

Billy’s dog had a weird colour, like Stracciatella ice cream. Aziraphale patted him, because he was not allowed to eat him; and Susan told them his name was Connie, because at first they had actually wanted to name him Stracciatella, but Billy could not pronounce this word, so they changed it to “ice cream cone”, which was ridiculous and they settled on Connie.  
Connie was typically a girl’s name and the dog was male, but you try explaining your vet that you gave your male dog a female name, because he looked like ice cream.  
You don’t. You say the name was your son’s idea and you haven’t had the talk about the birds and bees yet.

“He’s an Australian Shepherd”, Susan’s husband Gregory informed them.

“So, it is an immigrant that has a job?”, Crowley asked; and Gregory started explaining the complete etymology of naming dogs in the misconception that Crowley had any interest in it at all. Gregory was especially fascinated by the dachshund and kept calling it a wiener dog, telling Crowley stuff about hotdogs and the capital city of Austria. Crowley meanwhile regretted ever having said anything and swore he would stop making stupid remarks, if they meant he had to make conversation. Gladly Gregory left him in peace eventually as he said to look for the pedigree description or something, whatever he had said, Crowley really had not listened, in his room and then come back to show Crowley.

The demon mused about this for a while longer, why Gregory was not put off by his snarkiness and he concluded that the only reason Susan and her husband were still talking to him must be that they are more resilient than other humans or had maybe time to get used to him. No chance scaring them away now, when they already knew his personality. He would have to find new victims.

“Can I offer you some biscuits to make you feel better about having failed as parents?”, Susan asked them bittersweetly.

“Ah-ha-ha”, Aziraphale laughed very artificially. “Do you really think it is the time for biscuits? We don’t want to ruin the children’s appetite, do we?”

“That’s why I offered the biscuits to you and not the children, but if you can’t handle eating a biscuit…”

“I simply do not want to make the children feel as if we’d get sweets and withheld this pleasure from them. It wouldn’t be fair, would it?”

“Oh sure, I guess people whose parenting is rather weak have trouble explaining their kids that not all that is allowed to adults is allowed to them as well”, Susan replied. Despite the words being sad she and Aziraphale still smiled at each other. It looked a little like they had bitten on a lemon. Crowley watched with wide eyes the back and forth between her and the angel like it was a tennis match until he could not take it anymore.

“Rather old fashioned your paren”, Aziraphale began as Crowley interrupted him.

“THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE BISCUITS, BUT I WOULD MUCH PREFER SOME NICE TEA”, Crowley did NOT desperately yell to interrupt the two of them and keep them at the same time from going postal to prove who was the better parent.  
Adam and Billy were seated on the carpet in the living room, scratching the tiny puppy’s belly, while the dog was happily wagging his tail and panting with his rosy tongue hanging out from between his teeth. Cat was laying lazily over the backrest of the couch and watching them with faint interest.

Susan pulled her eyebrows together and pointed silently a finger at the demon, before retreating to the kitchen to set up some tea. Aziraphale huffed and turned to Crowley.

“You really needn’t interrupt me like that, dear.”

“Oh, you think? You think it would have been better, if I had just stood there and watched you two tearing each other’s heads off? What happened, angel? Weren’t you the one to befriend other parents in the first place?”

“Well, yes, but back then I had not known that accidently insulting this woman’s parenting techniques would lead to such a petty revenge on her side.”

“Petty? You mean that she got Billy a puppy?”

“Well, no”, Aziraphale muttered. “I guess there’s nothing wrong about that, but she needn’t rub it into my face like that.”

Crowley thought about an answer for a while and then just shrugged.

“What’s it to you, angel? Whatever you said, Adam has now the pet he wanted; and Billy has a puppy. Probably means they are both happy and you might just both be good parents.”

Aziraphale turned to him with hopeful eyes.

“Do you really think that, Crowley?”

“’course I do.”

Then Aziraphale started smiling at him again, and his face was so incredibly soft that Crowley had to look away. He really hoped no one would ask him something that required an answer, or at least an answer that included no ‘s’-sounds, because he knew for a fact, he would mess that up.

“I reckon we should be glad our boy decided to get a cat. Dogs do make an awful lot of work I’ve heard”, Aziraphale said more to himself than to anyone else and they continued watching the children play with the energetic little puppy, throwing balls and luring it with treats. At one point, Cat started wiggling with her butt the way cats do when they were ambuscading their pray and then jumped down from the couch. Standing on alert in the middle of the two boys and the puppy who all stopped their game to stare at the intruder, the cat was suddenly unsure what she had wanted to do and sprang over the dog in big leaps, hiding behind Adam’s back. Adam laughed and caught the cat to introduce the two pets to each other. The puppy barked excitedly.

 

-//-

 

“Do you want some more noodles?”, Aziraphale asked Adam as they were seated around the table in the kitchenette and eating dinner together. Adam nodded and held his plate up. On the floor Cat was munching away on her dinner making more noise than the three of them together. Crowley glared at the cat and took another sip of his juice.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Adam?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Adam. What do you want to know?”

“Why does Billy have a mum and a dad, and I have two dads, but no mum? Can you choose which you want? Why didn’t I get a mum? April, June and May had also two mums, but they said, they have also a dad they see sometimes on weekends. Do I have a mum? Can I see her on weekends, too?”

That were certainly a lot of questions and Aziraphale did what everyone would do in his situation and answered none of them, but stared at the boy in horror, then looking over to the demon, who looked equally horrified.

“You, er, you do not have a mother?”, Aziraphale attempted to answer at least one of the questions, but it came out sounding more like a question itself. He glanced back and forth between the boy and the demon trying to wrap his head around the concept of Christs, Antichrists and virgin birth, but no birth without a mother, was there? Adam looked up at him in honest interest; chewing on another bite of his meal.

“Why?”

“Er, because, er some people do not… have mothers”, Crowley said dumbly.

“Why?”, Adam repeated in the interrogation technique favoured by all children and turned his attention to his other parent.

“Because”, Crowley started, but was already at a loss. “Er, you know, you don’t get to choose your parents, because your parents choose you, er, or sometimes at least. You know, to have children you need a woman and a man and sometimes a woman and a man decide to have children together, but sometimes two women or two men want to have children together. Then it is a little bit more complicated, but often they just adopt a child that has no parents and then they are the child’s parents.”

“So, I am adopted?”

Crowley knocked his glass over, and juice flew all over his noodles and down the table on his legs. Aziraphale looked like someone had slapped him with this stunned face, open-hanging mouth, and one hand placed over his cheek. Well. That was not how they had thought this would go. But then they really had not given it much thought in the first place. They had, more or less, just avoided the topic. Now they were faced with their deepest fears of causing the apocalypse actually a few years too early. Aziraphale turned to the demon and hissed:

“Look what you have done!”

“What?”, Adam asked and looked at his parents in confusion. “What’s going on? Is it a secret? Did I ask something wrong?”

“No!”, Aziraphale hurried to say and reached over the table to put a hand on the boy’s arm. “No, no, no, Adam. It is alright. You didn’t do anything wrong. You are allowed to ask anything you want to ask. It is just…”, he trailed off. “We just wanted to wait until we tell you. Until you were a little older.”

Adam looked down at his plate and began poking around in his dinner.

“So, I am adopted?”

Aziraphale and Crowley looked at each other; Aziraphale exhausted and worried, Crowley wide eyed and like he was short of breath.

“Yes”, Aziraphale told him. “Your Dada and I adopted you.”

“You are not my real parents?”, Adam asked with big eyes. “But, but I thought…” He looked from Aziraphale to Crowley and back and then down on his plate. The two ethereal beings did neither know what to say nor dare to breath. When they saw Adam’s face getting red and tears rolling down his cheek under the fringe of his hair, they both sprung up and rounded the table to comfort him.

“Adam dear”, Aziraphale began and tried to put a hand on the boy’s back, but Adam shook his hand off.

“NO!”, he cried and got out of his seat. He shoved the demon away with both hands and ran out of the kitchenette. They scrambled around the table to follow him, but soon heard the door of his room shut and they found themselves standing helplessly in front of the closed door. Crowley raised his hand to knock, but Aziraphale reached for his arm and stopped him.

“Maybe we should give him some time alone?”, he said, but got more and more unsure of himself towards the end of the sentence. Crowley put a hand over his eyes and groaned.

“Ssshit”, he hissed silently.


	32. Part 29: Time to talk

His parents had still been standing in front of his door for about half an hour before they’ve given up and had left him with several offers for dessert, staying up late and watching action movies together, and the promise to celebrate his birthday earlier this year. On this offer there had been hushed discussions on the other side of his bedroom door with his parents arguing whether it was a good idea bribing their child or not. He had heard his Papa telling about a book he had read that meant bribing was bad, but his Dada did not see any problem with it as they were bribing him daily. Like, when they told him he could have his favourite dessert, if he only cleaned his room. His Papa had hissed that this example did in fact not go under bribery, but a very recommended psychological strategy including rewards, punishment, boxes with rats and buttons they had to push to either get electrocuted or food.

Adam had laid in his bed, holding on to his plush snake toy that was nearly as long as the bed, and had a red velvet tongue you could pull out of its mouth, and listened to them arguing.  
He normally liked listening to his parents’ arguments, because they never had bad arguments about not liking each other, or anything like that, but arguments about when to drink red wine, when to drink white wine, or if the rhinoceros was related to the unicorn, if the rhinoceros was in fact the later form of the unicorn after they had magically survived the big flood in the story about Noah’s ark. Sometimes they argued about books or Shakespeare’s plays, or his Dada was reading some story to Adam only for his Papa to interrupt him and saying that was not a story fit for a child. Very often it also happened the other way around and in the end Adam would almost always get to hear the stories, but not in a normal way, but in bits and pieces as his parents were discussing the parts they did or did not see fit for him to hear, right in front of him.

He normally liked listening to his parents’ arguments, and as much as he wanted to be sad right now, he could not stop thinking about how much more exiting it would be to be electrocuted instead of having just an early birthday. Adam was already eight and knew that an early birthday only meant he would have to wait longer for the next one. Where was the fun in that?

So, after maybe half an hour of arguing, knocking on his door and bribing him with cake, they had told him to have a good night and retreated from his bedroom door. It was almost completely dark in his room with only a tiny night light shining next to the door and the string of light flooding in from under the door. After a while, shadows started dancing in front of the door and as he heard a creaking sound, Adam propped himself up from the bed and stared intently at the door. The door opened a tiny bit and a black blob slipped inside.

“Cat”, Adam whispered and put the toy snake aside. The cat crossed the dark room, hopped onto the bed and started kneading the boy’s belly with two paws. “Uh Cat, that tickles! And it hurts a little…it hickles!”

As Cat finally found her victim comfortable enough, she lay on his belly and pulled her legs in, turning into a furry loaf. Adam snickered and petted her head softly. She started purring as he carefully caressed her ear and she pushed her head into his hand.

“Dada told me you got confused for a dog when he was taking you for a walk”, he told the cat. The cat turned its head to the side and rolled simultaneously over, so she was laying sideways over the boy and was equally slipping down to both his sides. “You are the worst sleeper I have ever seen”, he told her and rubbed her belly. She playfully caught his arm between her paws and held on to him. “But you are the best dog.”

Somewhere in the house a stack of books fell over followed by damped cursing; a sound Adam could easily recognize living in and behind a book shop. He sighed noisily and wiped the dried tears from his face with his hands, which only got cat hairs to stick to his cheeks.

“Guess we were both adopted”, he told Cat and remembered how he had chosen her even though his initial plan had been to get a dog. Cat stretched its legs and slid with her head down on the bed, so her ear got stuck inside out. Adam guessed calling his cat the worst sleeper would not be quite truthful as one of his parents seemed to never sleep at all and his other seemed to have troubles falling asleep in a bed and not literally anywhere else. Cat was more and more sliding off him and was also in danger of sliding off the bed, so he got up, pulled Cat back into the middle of the bed and put on his dragon-slippers.

He opened his door and glanced up and down the lit hallway. He guessed his parents were both still up and somewhere in the bookstore. So, he tiptoed carefully down the hallway, realized he did not want to go alone, hurried back into his room to fetch his snake and tiptoed back in the direction of the room he heard whispering coming from.

 

-//-

 

“What if he wants to find his real parents?”, Crowley asked while sitting not on, but next to an armchair and hugging his legs.

“We will have to tell him that it is not possible. We don’t know about his birthmother anyway and say his father gave him up for adoption”, Aziraphale said, but did not sound too sure. He was browsing in his books again, his forehead in deep lines. He looked up. “Does he have a birthmother?”

Crowley scrunched up his face.

“Who knows. Last time I checked biblical gods didn’t like to hook up with mortals to create half gods. On the other hand, it is the devil we are talking about.”

“Speaking of the devil”, Aziraphale began, but stopped in his tracks. Crowley raised his eyebrows at him. There was a noise behind them and Aziraphale turned in his chair to see what had caused it. Adam was standing in the doorway clutching his plush snake in his arms and looking at them uncertainly.

“Adam!”, Crowley said and got up from the floor.

The boy walked into the room and let himself be picked up by the demon, holding him under his armpits and lifting him over to the armchair. Grunting under the weight of the not so small boy anymore, Crowley sat himself into the chair and the boy on his knees. Adam was now clutching to both his plush snake and the demon. Aziraphale put his book aside and came over to both of them as well, seating himself on the armrest and stroking the boy’s wild locks. He noticed the cat hair sticking to the boy’s red cheeks and carefully picked them off. They did not say anything, but waited for Adam to speak. When he did, eventually, he asked again in a small voice the favourite question of every child.

“Why?” He nuzzled his nose into the plush snake. “Why did you adopt me?”

“Because”, Aziraphale opened his mouth and searched in his mind for the parent guidance books he had read on what to do in a situation like that. The important thing was

“We adopted you, because we wanted to have a child. You are our son and we love you very much”, Crowley interjected calmly. He rubbed up and down the boy’s back, less to sooth Adam but himself. Adam did not meet his parent’s eyes but held them fixated on his toy. “A-alright?”, Crowley asked. Finally, Adam looked up and first at the demon, who stared at him intently. Crowley was not wearing his sunglasses and had the exact same soul-searching stare as Cat, yellow eyes glowing dimly in the room. Adam turned to look at the angel, who nodded vehemently at him. Adam looked at his plush snake and back at the demon.

“Alright, Dada”, Adam said and flung his arms around the demon to hug him. Crowley seemed so relieved, he started breathing again. Then he waved with a hand at the angel, who leaned in from his place on the armrest to hug Adam from the other side, nearly crushing him between them.

“Does that mean you are my real parents or not?”, Adam asked quietly.

“We are your real parents”, Aziraphale ensured him without letting go. Adam tugged a little harder on the demon’s shirt, before a thought crossed his mind and he leaned back a little to look at his parents insistently. In anticipation they waited for the Antichrist to ask the question that was so plainly written on his face and dreaded what it might be.

“Just like Billy’s parents?”

Crowley blinked once with all his eyelids, then replied firmly:

“Yes. Just like Billy’s parents.”

Because even if Adam might had meant to ask, if Billy was adopted too; or if all parents are in a way the same no matter if they were adoptive parents or birth parents or if he had meant something entirely else, Crowley was at a point, where he would not deny Adam that they were indeed a real family, real parents with their real child and in that aspect just like any other loving family.

“So,”, Adam began mulling over a thought in his head. “it does not matter, if you have two dads, two mums or one of each?”

“It does not matter”, Aziraphale replied firmly. Adam turned around to him.

“Everyone can decide, if they marry a woman or a man?”, he asked curiously and Aziraphale’s face fell a little.

“Yes, well, … maybe not marry…”

“Why not?”, Adam asked with concern and leaned a bit back from the embrace. His brows were drawn together like he was thinking very hard about something. “You too are married, right? Billy told me that his parents are married, so you are too, right?”

“No”, Aziraphale said a little bitterly. “We are not married.”

“Why?”

“Because it is illegal.”

Adam scrunched up his nose and tilted his head to the side.

“Illegal? Like it is illegal to steal something?”

“Yes, no, yes,”, Aziraphale sighed. “well something like that.”

“That doesn’t seem right. Why could Billy’s parents get married then? Is it not illegal for them?”

“No, it is not. They are a woman and a man, and it is legal for them.”

Adam crossed his arms over his chest and pouted.

“But why?”, he whined.

“Because a lot of people don’t like it when two men get married to each other.”

“Why? Do they want you to get married to someone else?”

“No. They-“

“Are they afraid they might have to marry a man, too?”

“No. They-“

“Are they afraid you might illegalize marriage for a man and a woman?”

“No. They-“

“Well then I really don’t see what’s the point.”

“Adam”, Aziraphale said softly and a little deflated. “You know, sometimes the world does not work like you want it to.”

“But I want it to”, Adam finalized. “It’s stupid. It should not be stupid. The whole world should not be stupid, just because some people are stupid.”

“He’s got a point there”, Crowley muttered and shared a look with the angel. Aziraphale sighed again and decided he needed another hug. He pulled Adam into his arms again and the boy protested that he was already too old for more than one hug in less than a day.

 

-//-

 

“Ooooh! Aaaaah! Do you see it? Oooooh! I can see it very clearly here! Your future! And what’s this? Oooooh! A young man! I see a handsome, a very handsome man!”, the woman said stroking animatedly the glass sphere on the tiny coffee table in front of her. The table – like everything else in the room – was covered by lace, fabrics that were soft on the skin and gave the whole room the atmosphere of an ice cave, jingling bells and other ornaments turning every move into a din.

“Yeah, alright, but I don’t care about other people, what am I doing in my future?”, Anathema asked a little mockingly. She sat with crossed legs on the other side of the glass sphere that had a tiny light glowing inside and glanced with less than polite interest at the woman with the long black wig, fingernails she could defend herself against a shark with and eye shadow so heavy she could not open her eyes properly.

“You will meet this handsome man”, the woman said like she thought Anathema was a little slow.

“Yeah? Is he my postman?”

“No.”

“So, I will never have a handsome postman?”

“No, maybe, I mean another handsome man.”

“Is he a doctor? Right now, my doctor is a woman. Are you telling me that I will have to find another doctor in the future?”

“No. I-”

“Is he a murderer? Am I going to get killed?”

The woman looked a little like she wanted to murder Anathema.

“Be quiet or the ghosts of the future will shy away”, she spat at her and put a hand on her forehead. She kneaded her skin a while and Anathema asked herself, if she was still looking into the future or if she was getting a headache. After a few seconds the woman looked back at the glass sphere, made a few confused movements with her hands and continued her procedure.

“You will meet a very handsome man and you will fall in love and marry him and have children together. Oh No!” She stared at the sphere like it had grown a second head and then snapped and looked apologetically at Anathema. “I fear the ghosts of the future have left. Take the exit to the left.”

“Alright”, Anathema said easily and only half-heartedly tried to hide her grin as she got up on her feet and left the jingling room. Her mother sat on a chair outside the room and looked up at her as Anathema closed the door behind her.

“You are already back?”, she asked. “How was it.”

“Bollocks”, Anathema muttered. “Can we now go get groceries. I only came, because you said you needed help carrying the water, and not for you to trick me into going to one of those charlatans again.” Bevor her mother could answer she rushed to the stairs and climbed them to get out of this cellar that was sold to them as a cavern of epiphany. She had already forgotten that they had to go down to meet that fortune teller while sitting in that tiny room full of weird ornaments. Of course, it had been so chilly in there.

“Can you at least tell me, if she really had the gift of if she was just making things up?”, her mother asked as they walked to the grocery store.

“She was definitely making things up. She even cut my time short, when I did not stop asking questions.”

“Well, that does not have to mean anything. Maybe you just annoyed her.”

Anathema rolled her eyes, which was gratefully concealed by her large black fedora hat. She was wearing all black, but bright red socks and had to hide her smile, when people stared at her socks disapprovingly.

“I did annoy her on purpose. She annoyed me as well with her ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’, and then she just assumed my utmost dream was to meet some beautiful man. Like, what if I don’t want to meet and marry some bloke?”

“Oh, you just say that, because you are young”, her mother laughed. “Someday you will put the rose glasses on and see that the whole world wants to be in love. Is it not better to meet a beautiful young man than instead of one that is not?”

Anathema stuffed her hands in her pockets and listened to her racing heart. She wanted to talk to her mother, make her understand that, no, not everyone wants to be in love, not everyone wants to be in love with a man, not everyone wants to get married. She wanted to tell her that the misunderstanding between them was not caused by them being of two different generations, that Anathema was not just going through a phase and once she reached her mother’s age, she would not see everything the exact same way as her mother did. She wanted to tell her that they were talking two different language, because her mother knew nothing about being queer and all the vocabulary that came with being queer or only understanding queer. She wanted to tell her, but she did not want to have the discussion that would without question follow, because the only thing her mother would answer would be something along the lines of ‘oh I don’t know about this weird new trend’, ‘I really can’t keep up with all the new words people are making up’ or ‘you will grow out of it’.

Anathema gritted her teeth and as they reached the grocery store, she just stood around unwilling to be helpful around instead of getting a shopping cart. Her mother gave her a weird look and then got the shopping cart herself.

“You know what, mum”, Anathema said as her mother pulled the shopping cart out. “I will never marry a bloke. I can’t stand them and anyway, I will never meet a man that is as beautiful as I am, so no reason to settle down for anything less.” She stared intently at her mother without blinking, while her mother only raised her eyebrows and turned the shopping cart to enter the store.

“Alright, honey”, she said. Anathema still gritted her teeth. A man walked by to get to the shopping carts and threw a disapproving look at her socks. Anathema stuck her tongue out and followed her mother into the store.


	33. Part 30: All about fashion

“You’re already up?”

“Yeah, morning”, Anathema mumbled and walked past her mother, who just came back in from getting the newspaper. Still in pyjamas Anathema shuffled to the fridge to get the milk. She fished for a banana in the fruit basket, cut it up over a bowl, added cereal and milk. Her mother sat down on the kitchen table and took a sip from her coffee, before opening the newspaper.

“Any news?”, Anathema asked and slid into the chair on the other side of the table.

“Everyday”, her mother answered smiling. “There was another car accident”, she read aloud. “It’s going to get hotter today…”

“Yeah, who are they kidding”, Anathema muttered and stirred in her bowl.

“Oh, they apparently legalized marriage for homosexuals. Isn’t that a bit sudden? I didn’t hear anything about it in the news or shouldn’t they have asked the people first?”

“What?”

“I mean, the citizens of a country should have a say in how its laws are, right? They at least should make these surveys on the streets to see how the reactions are.”

“What? I mean, what? What’s going on?”, Anathema asked in sheer confusion and grabbed for the newspaper. She had not even really listened to what her mother had said last, because she had been so surprised by the random dropping of those news. “Let me read that”, she said as she already plucked the newspaper out of her mother’s hands.

“Anathema! That’s so impolite”, her mother scolded her, but Anathema was already engrossed in the giant headline with the background of a rainbow flag and asked herself, how her mother could have mentioned the weather first. With big eyes she scanned the article, then sprang up from the table and rushed out of the kitchen. Her mother first just stared at her empty seat than got up to see what her daughter was doing. With surprise she noticed that Anathema was pulling her boots over her feet while still wearing her pyjama shorts and an oversized black shirt with a skull on the front. Her short hair was in disarray.

“Anathema, what are you doing?”, her mother asked her incredulous.

“I need to tell Jasmin!”

“Right now?”

“Bye mum”, Anathema shouted over her shoulder as she pulled the door open and sprang down the stairs. She threw her arms in the air while taking two steps at the time and yelling her war cry. A few people stared at her in much the same way they usually stare at her fashion choices.

 

-//-

 

“Papa, I can’t get into my shoe.”

Aziraphale looked up from the two choices of neckerchiefs he had, holding them each in one hand and comparing their tartan patterns with each other. He saw Adam lying dramatically on the floor like he was trying to make snow angles in the bookstore. One of his feet was still bare and the other stuck only half in a shoe that looked as small as a doll’s shoe. It was green and had dinosaurs on it.

“Whose shoes are these?”, Aziraphale asked in confusion.

“My shoooes! They are tooo smaaaaall”, Adam whined and kicked his legs; so, his shoe flew away and against the wall. Aziraphale put one of his neckerchiefs away and flung the other one around his neck to tie it. Then he picked the tiny shoe up from the floor and examined it. His forehead wrinkled in confusion. He knew this shoe. He had bought this shoe. Only, when he had bought it, it had to have been at least five sizes bigger. He looked at the boy on the floor and thought if he really could have turned the shoe smaller on his own.

“Do you not like these shoes anymore?”, he asked. Adam shook his head.

“I want to have blue shoes! With whales!”

“Whales?”

Adam nodded.

“Anathema told me about the whales.”

Aziraphale sighed and looked at the tiny shoe again. He actually had just wanted to go out to the park for a walk, but now he would have to tell Crowley that their plans had changed and that they would have to go shopping for new shoes.

“Alright, go look for some shoes you can put on and then we go and buy new ones”, he told Adam, who quickly scrambled to his feet to get his shoes. Aziraphale meanwhile went to look for the demon to tell him about the change in plans.

 

-//-

 

Crowley was standing in front of the mirror and looking at himself in scrutiny. He had one hand on his chin, one hand around his stomach and turned from one side to the other while observing how the slit in his floor long skirt displayed his leg whenever he moved, wondering if he could go out like this. Of course, he could. There was absolutely nothing speaking against him wearing a chic skirt only to go for a walk in the park with the angel and their son. The real question was, what would Aziraphale think about his fashion choices. He turned his leg on the heel from left to right and looked at his foot. Crowley sighed. He did not own any shoes. He was always wearing snake, but… well, not really shoes and sometimes he was tempted to wear heels, which was not complicated in itself. By just concentrating a little he could wear heels, but the last time he had tried that he had fallen over his own feet and just into the next wall headfirst. The biggest tragedy had been that he had not been alone at the time, but out in public. The accident he had to cause to distract from his little mishap had been quite ugly.

Someone opened the door to the bedroom and Crowley quickly tried to act casually. Aziraphale entered the room and his eyes fell on the demon.

“Oh, there you are, my dear!” The angel smiled and inspected the demon’s outfit. “Oh, it has been a while since I have seen you in a skirt!”

“That wasn’t a skirt, it was a kilt”, the demon corrected him.

“Pardon me, I forgot. Anyway, you look good either way.”

“Do you remember the ressstaurant we went back then?”, Crowley asked and blessed under his breath for not having thought of a word with out an ‘s’.

“Oh yes! With that lovely cheese plate! And what wine we had”, Aziraphale said in dreamily memory. He smiled a little lost in thoughts, before he remembered what he had come to do. “Before I forget, Adam has managed to shrink his shoes; so, we have a change in plans and go shopping today.”

“Oh?”, Crowley said and threw his leather jacket over his shoulders, giving his shoes the tiniest of heels. Aziraphale looked at him, looked away and then gave him another frowning look.

“Did you just grow taller?”

“What?”

“You suddenly look taller.”

“I? Me? Taller? What?”

“You”, Aziraphale began, but then shook his head. “Never mind, dear. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, yeah, sssure, ready, let’sss go”, Crowley replied and nodded. He waved the angel out of the bedroom and followed him behind, but before that he threw another look into the mirror to fix his hair.

 

-//-

 

As they walked through London each holding one of Adam’s hands, they could not help but notice a few changes.

“Did it rain last night?”, Crowley asked.

“What? Why?”

“Because there are so many rainbows around.”

There were a few people with rainbows around their necks, rainbows on their cheeks, rainbow flags and all those rainbow-people seemed to flock to each other chattering in excitement about some sort of big… happening that had… happened.

“Oh, Crowley, that are no real rainbows. Let’s go in here”, Aziraphale decided and pulled the boy and the demon into the store they usually bought Adam’s clothing. Adam hopped excitedly into the store and immediately tore himself away from his parents to run into the shoe section. Crowley hurried to follow him, before he would cause a chaos. As anticipated, Adam was already pulling out shoe box after shoe box and tried to squeeze his feet into two different shoes, one with sharks on them, the other with a night sky pattern.

“You look after him, alright, my dear”, Aziraphale told Crowley. “I will just look a minute for some new socks.”

Crowley nodded and crouched down next to the boy to help him into his shoes.

“They have sharks on them”, Adam told him. “Look!”

“They sure have”, Crowley agreed. “What kind of shoe are we looking for?”

“Shoes with whales.”

“I see”, Crowley said and looked around in a store full of pink shoes with princesses on them, red shoes with Spiderman on them and blue shoes with cars on them. The demon remembered suddenly when they had went shopping for Adam’s crib back when he had still been a baby.  
He still remembered how he had stood helplessly in front of the princess cribs and the pirate cribs as if they presented the two genders. He did not know what to do with the information that there seemed to be three genders now: car, princess and superhero. As he knew that was not what the boy wanted, he instead pulled out a random shoebox and as he opened it the box contained blue shoes with whales on them in Adam’s exact size. He handed the box to his son.

“What do you think?”, Crowley asked as Adam inspected his new look in front of a mirror.

“How do I look?”

“You are rocking those whale-shoes.”

“I am rocking them!”, Adam agreed. Aziraphale came back with his hands full with new socks, all with sea life patterns, whales, seahorses and sharks. The demon was sure the store had just as many whale-socks in stock as it had whale-shoes, so when Aziraphale showed the socks to Adam, the demon grinned at the angel over their son’s head. They shared a secret look about little miracles on how to buy their son the clothes he wanted.

“Do we have everything?”, Aziraphale asked and as Adam nodded, he told him to put the shoes that he did not want back into the boxes. They paid for the shoes and socks and left to take the route through the park to return to the book shop.

“Can’t we stay a little at the park and feed the ducks?”, Adam asked and tried to pull his parents into the direction of the lake.

“We have no time”, the angel protested. “We are meeting Billy and his parents for dinner today.”

“Really? I can’t wait to play with Connie again. I think it’s great that Billy has a dog now; so, we can always play together. Can we take Cat with us?”

“I think Cat would rather like to take a nap.”

 

-//-

 

“Oh, there you are! I am so happy to see you!”, Susan greeted them with a painfully wide smile and pulled them inside her flat as soon as she opened the door for them. “Are you well, Adam? Billy is already so excited to see you. Why don’t you go play together with the dog?”

With a cheerful cry Adam dropped to his bottom to pull his shoes off and ran into the flat to look for his best friend. Then, Susan continued to usher the angel into the kitchen, where he should talk with her husband about the difference between green tea and black tea. Aziraphale knitted his brows in suspicion but supplied anyway, because he really could go for a cup of tea right now. That only left Susan and the demon standing in the hallway, and little did Crowley now that he had just fallen victim to one of Susan’s vicious plans. He was very likely to not survive the evening.

“You”, Susan said and pointed her index finger into his face. “Accompany me into the bedroom.”

“Wot!?”

 

-//-

 

After she had pulled the demon into her bedroom by his wrist, she had made him sit down on the bed and closed the door – but only after she had thrown a last suspicious look out on the corridor, if anyone had noticed their disappearing. Crowley contemplated fleeing for a second, but then Susan turned around to him and she had this look in her eyes that he quickly abandoned the thought.

“Have you seen the news?”, Susan asked him.

“What news?”

“Today’s news! Have you read the newspaper, watched the telly or heard it on the street? Didn’t you notice the celebrating people and the flags all over the town?”

“Flags?”

“The rainbow flags!”

Crowley distantly remembered something like that.

“I think I noticed a few rainbows. Why?”

“Oh my god!”, Susan exclaimed and threw her arms in the air. She turned around, squished her face and turned back to give Crowley an exhausted look. “I thought you would know for sure! After all, it concerns you and Zira even more than me! Anthony!”

“Yes?”, Crowley asked intimidated.

“England has just become the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage! Right now! Today! In the year 1998! This year!”

Crowley stared at her with raised eyebrows. He was still wearing his sunglasses; therefore, his eyebrows were the only hint that his eyes were wide as he tried to grasp what Susan was trying to tell him. Susan had just told him that England had legalized marriage for two men or two women. England had legalized the same-sex marriage only a day after they had explained to Adam why he and the angel were not married. However much the humans had a hand in their own fate, Crowley knew that this was more than a simple coincidence.

“It’s really legal now”, he breathed in awe.

“YES!”, Susan cheered and put her hands on Crowley’s shoulders to shake him. She jumped slightly up and down transferring her excitement onto him. “You know what that means, right?”

“Of course,”, Crowley replied, before he realized that Susan very likely did not mean that it meant that Adam was enfolding more and more of his powers as he got closer to the age of eleven. He furrowed his brows and wanted to ask what she meant, but she beat him to it.

“It means you have to propose to Zira!”

“Yes, I- what?”

“You have to, Anthony! You have to! He will love it! It will be so romantic!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you already saw it coming, and here we are!
> 
> In an actual Romcom!


	34. Part 31: Water down

Still smiling to herself Anathema closed the door behind her, shook her shoes of her feet and went into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. She was surprised to see her mother sit at the kitchen table looking sombre.  
Anathema only faltered shortly in her step, then took a glass out of the cupboard and looked in the fridge for something to drink.

“Hello Anathema. I see you are back.”

“Yupp”, Anathema said trying not to fall for the bait, because she feared there was a bigger reason for her mother to just sit for who knows how long in the kitchen and wait for her to come back. Anathema tried to remember, if she had left on a bad note or if she had forgotten something.

“Do not ignore me, Anathema.”

“I am not”, Anathema replied tensed. She realized she’s been staring at the mayonnaise for way to long and shook her head to remember what she had wanted from the fridge. She fidgeted for the sparkling water and poured herself a glass. She wanted to walk out of the room, but instead she hesitated and let her mother call her to the table. Suppressing an eye-roll she sat down opposite of her mother and realized for the first time that they were not alone.

The Book was with them.

Like hypnotized she stared at The Book lying between them on the table like a bad omen. She felt like she had escaped prison and running through flower fields without noticing that she had escaped and now the prison guards had caught up with her.

“What’s this about?”, she asked with a hoarse voice. Her mother took a deep breath and put a hand on The Book. Absent minded she traced the letters on the cover, then put her hand back on the table.

“I noticed that you were behaving really strangely for the past weeks”, her mother began; already holding up a hand to prevent her daughter from interrupting. “I haven’t said anything, because I thought it might be a phase, but you have gotten really impolite and rude and I don’t see you realizing that this is the wrong way for a young lady to behave.”

“Oh, and if I wasn’t a young lady, I would be allowed to behave like that?”, Anathema retorted pissed off.

“Anathema!”

Anathema knew it was not the smartest thing to do and that she should better stay calm instead of just snapping back, but what her mother had said was just rubbing her the wrong way. She was clenching her teeth and felt like her heart was pulsing in her ears.

“What even does that mean? ‘Behave like that’? Behave like what?”, she asked hot-headed.

“You are behaving like a petty little child!”

“I am not a child!”, Anathema yelled and slammed her hands on the table; accidently knocking her glass of water over.

“Very grown up, I see”, her mother huffed. Anathema shoved her chair back and went to look for a cloth to wipe up the spilled water.

“Don’t walk away on me, young lady!”, her mother exhorted. Anathema whirled around waving angrily with the cloth she had found.

“I am not walking away! I am trying to clean up the mess!” She started wiping the table around The Book and her mother picked it up as if the table had suddenly caught fire. “What did you even want to talk about?”

“I wanted to talk about The Book”, her mother said stiffly. As Anathema did not say anything, she continued: “I know it has been hard since we cannot rely on The Book anymore,”, at this point Anathema just snorted sarcastically, “but I feel like you are almost happy that the predictions of Agnes Nutter aren’t veritable anymore.” She stared at Anathema intently. Anathema started cleaning the wet chair. “And?”, her mother asked.

“And what?”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Young lady!”

“What!?”

“Are you happy that The Book is useless now?”

“Yes, I am”, Anathema forced out from between clenched teeth.

Her mother sprang up from the chair in once, knocking it almost over and glaring staggers at the teenage girl. She was clinging to The Book as if Anathema might just want to take it from her, but Anathema was calmly wiping up the water from the floor now, taking a lot longer than necessary.

“How can you say something like that?”, her mother asked incredulously. “This Book is a gift from our great ancestor Agnes Nutter. She has solely written it for the purpose of looking after us, entrusting us with knowledge on how to use the future to our advantage! Our whole life is written in The Book”, her voice caught, and she corrected herself, “was written in The Book, before everything has gone wrong.”

“Gone wrong?”, Anathema laughed scornfully. “For the first time in my life everything is going right. You don’t understand how horrible it is to grow up with your whole life written out for everyone to see!”

“Of course, I know! My life is in there as well!”

“But not like that! My death is in there! I never wanted to know about that! I did not want countless relatives comment on me hooking up with some random guy I have never met before. I mean, seriously? The descendant of the guy that burned Agnes Nutter down? Seriously?”

The more Anathema said, the angrier she got, she was pointing between her mother and The Book; brandishing around the wet cloth. Her face was red and her throat tight. She had to force the words out like they were stuck.

“Am I nothing more than a puzzle piece in Agnes’ revenge?”, she cried. “Why going and try to prevent Armageddon, when it is happening anyway? The book ended, I failed!” She threw the cloth into the sink and opened her arms in helplessness. “Yes, I am glad that stupid book has lost its power! Agnes Nutter can go fuck herself and I am going to live my life!” She stormed out of the kitchen, pulled her boots back on; even though, she had just come back from outside and fled the flat.

 

-//-

 

“I am just disappointed by things that are named after a colour, but look more like a very washed out version of the colour and not at all exciting”, Greg pondered while pouring the cooked water into the cups he had prepared with one tea bag each.

Aziraphale blinked at him.

“What?”

“You know… blueberries are really blue, kind of, but what’s up with the tea? I mean, wouldn’t it be cool, if it really was black tea?”, he asked and stared into the water that was slowly turning darker. “Not just like some boring… dusty water.”

“Dusty?”, Aziraphale cried out.

“Yeah, sorry, I could not think of a better word. What even is the difference between black and green tea?”

“Shouldn’t you know?”, the angel asked him in the fast knowledge that every grown person should know about the food and drinks they are consuming on a daily basis.

“Oh no, I am Canadian, you see?”, Greg replied apologetically. He put the water cooker away and took a plate of biscuits out of the cupboard. “Biscuit?”

Aziraphale gave him a pitying smile and took one of the offered biscuits; ruminating about how one could call tea washed out. Philistine, Aziraphale thought bitterly and bit in the biscuit. It contained raisins.

 

-//-

 

Crowley stared into nothingness as Susan put her hands on his shoulders and used him as a springboard to express her excitement. She was still cheering, shaking him as if she sensed he was being deep in thoughts. Her good mood was infectious. “You know what that means, right?”, she asked.

Crowley nodded slowly “Of course,” while trying to grasp the fact that he and Aziraphale had just the day before told Adam that they could not get married, because it was not legal. Now the very next day they had suddenly legalized same-sex marriage, and they were not even trying to pretend that it was a coincidence. Adam had to be enfolding his powers.  
Drawing his eyebrows up behind his sunglasses he realized that Susan could not know about that and had to be talking about something else. He wanted to ask her what she meant, but she beat him to it.

“It means you have to propose to Zira!”

“Yes, I- what?”

“You have to, Anthony! You have to! He will love it! It will be so romantic!”

“What are you talking about?”, the demon asked like he was run over by a toy car. He was really dazzled as to what was happening in that moment. Susan was at like an eleven regarding her motivation and energy right now and he needed her at a five or lower to explain to him what she was on about, because he was not following. Susan seemed to have realized exactly that and sighed deeply, taking one hand off the demon’s shoulder and patted him with the other one.

“Anthony. I need you to listen to me.”

“Alright”, the demon replied easily.

“They legalized same-sex marriage today.” She was talking really slowly as if she thought Crowley was a child she really had to drag by the hand, because he tried to count the tiles on the floor while walking. She tried to slow down to let him catch up.

“Yes.”

“And you and Zira are the same sex.”

“Well, technically -”, Crowley wanted to correct her, but realized he could not contradict the statement with the wording she had used. Angels and demons were indeed of the same sex, or more correctly ‘sexlessness’. He closed his mouth again and fell silent.

“Technically what?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

Susan squinted her eyes, looked down at the demon’s skirt and back at the demon’s face.

“I really like your skirt.”

“Thank you.”

“I think you and Zira are a really lovely couple, and if anyone asked me, if we should legalize same-sex marriage, I would have totally said yes. But they went and legalized it just like that, and I think it would be wonderful, if you two would get married now.”

Crowley took a deep breath, took his sunglasses off and pressed his fingers into eyelids.

Alright, Susan and he were on the same page now, and oddly enough he got her reasoning. Of course, he would not consider marrying Aziraphale, just to please his neighbour. He would, on the other hand, do just that, because he really liked that angel, was already spending his life with him, and their son wanted them to be a real family. He let his hands fall into his lap and blinked the white spots before his eyes away.

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your eyes. Are they your normal eyes? Do you have some sort of eye problem; so, you always have to wear sunglasses?”, Susan asked and came really close to Crowley’s face to stare into his yellow eyes.

“Er, yeah…”, Crowley muttered, leaning away from her to put his sunglasses back on. “So, marriage, you say?”

Susan squealed in excitement and started jumping up and down.

“Yes, yes, yes, this will be so great!”, she cried. “Of course, we need to do some planning. We need to find out the best way to propose, the ring, the place, the words, the timing, if Adam will be there or if you want to have some time alone to make it extra romantic and we”

“We?”, Crowley interrupted her confused. Just that moment, the door to the bedroom was opened and Greg put his head inside the room, looking confused between his wife and the demon sitting on their bed.

“Darling, do you want a cup of tea, too?”, he asked, focusing on Susan.

“Yes, thank you. We will be with you in a second”. Susan told her husband. As Greg retreated, Susan turned back to the demon, gave him a complicated sign with her hands and a very determinate look in her eyes. “We’re going to work on this later. Time to play the innocent.”

“The what?”

“Pssst!”, Susan said putting a finger on her lips. “Just act like you don’t know anything.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about”, Crowley said slowly, shaking his head.

“Excellent!”, Susan told him and took his hands to pull him up from the bed. “Let’s go.” She ushered him out of the bedroom into the kitchen to get back together with their significant others and their children. The boys were sitting on the floor and playing with the dog. They were trying to get Connie to fetch the balls they were repeatedly throwing under the kitchen table, but the only thing they had achieved so far, was to lose a lot of balls and other toys.  
When Crowley and Susan entered the room, Adam and Billy looked up. The grown-ups were sitting around the table, drinking their tea and Billy leaned over to Adam, whispering into his ear:

“Why is your dad wearing a skirt?”

Adam shrugged.

“I guess, he just likes it.”

Billy turned to look at Adam’s parent with wide eyes.

“I thought only girls were allowed to wear skirts”, he said in awe. “I also want to wear a skirt.”

“You can wear whatever you like”, Adam said and threw another ball that rolled directly by the dog. Connie was hatchelling and staring at him with a look that said he did not know what Adam was trying to do either. “When I told Dada and Papa, I wanted shoes with whales on them, they got me shoes with whales. Have you seen them? They let me wear whatever I like.” He crawled under the table to get the toys back.

“That’s cool”, Billy said. Adam handed him a toy bone and Connie suddenly started barking, jumping up and down, snapping for the bone. Adam laughed, trying to hold on to the toy together with Billy as Connie bit into it.

 

-//-

 

“What were you talking about in the bedroom?”, Aziraphale asked and fished for another biscuit on the plate. Crowley threw a panicked look at Susan, who threw it right back.

“Er, we were talking about…”, he began as he noticed a small person tapping him on the arm. He turned around and noticed Billy standing behind him. He opened his mouth and took a second to say: “Huh?”

“Why are you wearing a skirt?”, Billy asked.

“Er, because I like it.”

“Awesome. Mum?”, Billy turned to Susan. “Can I have a skirt, too?”

“Sure. We can go buy one next time we go shopping. Do you want to have a biscuit? Adam? Biscuit?”

“Thanks”, Billy and Adam both said, reaching for a biscuit each. They joined their parents at the table, telling them how they had tried to teach the dog some tricks. Aziraphale, Crowley, Susan and Greg listened attentively, sipping tea, dipping biscuits and pretended not to notice, when the boys were distracting them really badly while feeding treats to Connie under the table.  
As another dog-treat disappeared, Crowley turned to the side and noticed that the angel was smiling at him. Immediately, he remembered his talk with Susan and the conclusion he had come to. Planning it out in his mind, he smiled back.


	35. Part 32: The ABC of parenting and proposing

“I am really looking forward to this”, Aziraphale said while fixing his bow tie in the mirror. Somewhere behind him Crowley was pulling out a jacket for Adam to wear. The demon smiled and silently congratulated himself. Together with Susan he had planned out that he would take the angel out for a date, since they have not done that in a long time. The planning had taken days, not at last because he had to purchase and arrange a few things to make everything work. Other things had come in between, like Adam’s ninth birthday, the small party they had thrown him with Billy, Susan, Greg and a few of Adam’s school friends. Now, the summer was already coming to an end. Adam was desperate to spend as many days as possible playing with his new toys, with Billy and their pets.

Today, after a few long weeks, it was finally the right time for Crowley to go through with his plan. They would bring Adam over to the Gardners to stay with Billy for the night and go to the Ritz for dinner.  
Once they had finished clothing themselves, they went over to their neighbours and were surprised by Cat that had followed them to stay with Adam. The second Susan had opened the door, Cat squeezed inside and disappeared somewhere inside the flat.

“I see, Cat is also here”, Susan remarked as she stared over her shoulder on the spot where she had seen the feline monster last.

“My apologies, it was not my intention”, Aziraphale apologised and kissed Susan on the cheek.

“Adam! Come, let’s play with my action figures!”, Billy shouted as soon as he noticed the guest had arrived and Adam rushed to get rid of his shoes and jacket.

“Don’t throw your clothes on the floor”, Aziraphale scolded him, and Susan took the opportunity to pull at the demon’s arm and whisper into his ear:

“Everything like we planned it?”

“Er, yes, yes, everything like planned.”

Susan nodded satisfied and let go of the demon’s arm to give him an encouraging sign with her hands. Adam had hung his jacket up on the wardrobe and followed Billy to go play in his room. Aziraphale turned back to the demon and Susan.

“Thank you very much for taking him today.”

“It’s nothing. Billy loves having Adam over. Now, go and have a nice evening together.” As she ushered them out of the doorway, she winked at the demon one last time. Crowley waved her off over his shoulder and lead the Aziraphale to the Bentley.

 

-//-

 

“Do you like it?”, Crowley asked nonchalant from behind his wineglass as the waiter placed the angel’s plate in front of him. With a wink the waiter placed the demon’s plate before him and Crowley interpreted that tiny sign as the message that: yes, the waiter had done as requested and placed the ring Crowley had chosen inside the food the angel had ordered and had not made any mistakes, and no misunderstandings had happened, either.

For once, Crowley’s interpretation of a wink was exactly correct.

He thanked the waiter for the food and received a very confused look from the angel, who was not used to the demon thanking people. Crowley could have bitten his tongue as to how he had not thought of a more discreet way to signal the waiter that everything was going after plan. He was just glad the angel had been so focused on his dessert he had not noticed the waiter winking at Crowley.

“Er, do you like it?”, Crowley repeated his question to shake off the angel’s suspicion.

“I haven’t tasted it yet”, Aziraphale reminded him and raised a fork with a piece of cake to his lips. They had already eaten the main course, because the demon had wanted to wait for dessert for the surprise.

“Of course, of course”, he muttered and poked around in his own cake rather uninterested. He kept glancing to the angel, who finally took the first bite. Forgetting to breath the demon watched as the angel chewed on the delicious cake and made immediately sounds of pleasure, humming contently. He smiled at the demon and nodded at his cake.

“You should try it.”

“Oh, er, of course, I am”, Crowley ensured and hastily speared a piece of his own cake. He started chewing exaggeratedly to show the angel that nothing weird was going on and everything was normal.

“No, I meant, you should try my cake. You seemed so curious about its taste and I can tell you, its heavenly.” Innocently, Aziraphale put another bite on his fork and held it out for the demon to taste. Crowley blushed at the implication that he was being fed by his… well… partner. The cake really looked delicious, with lots of cream and blueberries and pudding melting on the tongue. He licked his lips and tried to get out of this by mumbling about how a demon eating heavenly tasting cake was probably not a good idea. Still opposing he leaned in and took the bite from the offered fork. Like a fish tearing itself off a hook he shied away again, smirked in false confidence and started chewing on the cake. Something cracked and the demon swore it were his teeth breaking apart.

“Dear? Are you alright?”, Aziraphale asked and let almost his fork fall as the demon let his head drop on the table next to his own cake, hiding his face behind his hands. As he started shaking Aziraphale got really worried. “Are-are you crying?”

Crowley groaned into the table and put a hand over his mouth to inconspicuously spit out the ring in his mouth and put it back into his pocket, before he made a complete fool of himself. He was crying, and he wished, he would have asked to put the ring into the soup, because then this could have been his test run and he would have had two more tries to go.

“Why, you must really love this cake”, Aziraphale mused to himself and offered Crowley another bite after taking one himself. “We can ask for the recipe, if you like it so much you start to cry.”

 

-//-

 

As Crowley went to pick up Adam the next morning, Susan opened the door with a very expectant sparkling in her eyes. He crashed her hopes with a stony face and his lips in a thin line.

“Adam! Your father is here to pick you up!”, Susan called over her shoulder and they could hear shuffling of boys trying to pick up the mess they had made as an answer. Susan turned to whisper at Crowley: “And? Are you engaged yet?”

“No”, Crowley bit out between gritted teeth.

“What? Why not?”

“I am working on it.”

“Dada, can I stay a little longer?”, Adam asked after rushing to the door with his backpack over his shoulder.

“No, get your shoes. I already cooked lunch.”

Grumbling to himself Adam went to get his shoes and Susan threw an exasperated look at the demon. Crowley scowled and hoped he would not have to explain himself any further.

“Well,”, Susan said. “I guess, it’s plan B then.”

 

-//-

 

“What a nice weather”, Aziraphale remarked as they took a leisurely walk through the park. A street musician was playing the violin and it was quite warm for one of the last days of summer. The leaves of the trees had already started turning red and orange and yellow and the bright sunlight was catching in it like cobwebs catch watery drops of dew.

They were holding hands and had brought an entire loaf of bread to feed to the ducks. They turned to the water, letting go of each other’s hand reluctantly, and Crowley offered the angel a piece of bread to throw it in the lake. Lost in thought the angel picked it apart and threw it in front of a couple of quite heavy-looking ducks that had already approached the two secret looking figures. It was part of their Pavlovian reflex to find any group of people that looked like secret agents from opposite sides meeting with each other. Then they would just lazily swim in front of them and wait to be fed. Secret agents always had something to feed the ducks with them, because you need to bring bread to make it a convincing alibi.

“I am already dreading the days we need to figure out more math-problems”, Aziraphale sighed and threw a few crumbs at a nearby pigeon. With the summer Adam’s vacation came to an end, too. Soon he would have to return to school and Aziraphale would have to open his book shop again. Of course, summer vacation did not normally include book shops, but… Aziraphale firmly believed they should.

“Don’t bother, we just pay that weird goth girl to do it”, Crowley said offhandedly while tearing more and more tiny pieces apart, collecting them in his hands like a bread maniac.

“Anathema.”

“Gesundheit.”

“You forgot the name of Adam’s tutor again. Her name is Anathema.”

“Her parents probably also panicked when they had to come up with a name. You know, like we did”, the demon huffed and put the remaining loaf under his arm to hold the crumbs in both his hands, shaking them as if he was going to throw them like a dice. Aziraphale only gave him a curious side glance, before returning his attention to black swan floating together with a white swan on the lake.

“How do you mean that, my dear?”

“I truly believe the reasoning behind every child, whose name that starts with an ‘A’ is simply panicking parents, who probably both share the same name starting with an ‘A’ themselves.”

Aziraphale laughed. Crowley took the opportunity of the angel closing his eyes to throw all the bread crumbs in his hands at once. They magically floating down on the water in a very slow manner, taking the time to form seven letters and a question mark.

“Oh, what have we here”, Crowley said a bit artificially after looking at his work satisfied. He made a waving gesture at the lake. “Have you seen the lake, angel?”

Aziraphale perked up while still looking on the ground, where a brave little duck had come daringly close to his feet to ask for more bread. Aziraphale sprinkled a few crumbs on it and then looked at the lake, blinking because the was blinded by the sun light.

“You mean the swans, dear? Yes, they are indeed beautiful.”

“No, I mean”, Crowley wildly gestured at the question ‘MARRY ME?’ floating in the water. Suddenly it bubbled beneath the surface and a few of the crumbs disappeared. Crowley stared at the empty space with an open mouth. More than a dozen fish attacked the bread crumbs at once and only left behind a disfigured question mark.

“Look, dear, the bread crumbs look a little like a snake”, Aziraphale said and pointed at the bread crumbs. Crowley bit into the bread loaf to dampen his swearing.

 

-//-

 

“Plan C?”, Susan suggested as she saw his grumpy face again.

“Plan C.”

 

-//-

 

“Please, come down, I beg you”, Crowley said with folded hands and looked up the bright yellow and orange crowned tree. It was placed in a tiny square of earth and surrounded by cement; all together a sad attempt to make the city appear greener. A few people walking by were giving the demon odd looks, to which he sneered back hostilely.

“Hey, Dada. What are you doing?”, Adam asked as he and Billy were passing by on their way around the building. They had wanted to take Connie for a walk on their own, but their parents had demanded they stayed near the book shop; thus, they kept circling the same couple of houses again and again, while being pulled by a very excited Australian Shepherd on a leash.

“Adam!”, Crowley exclaimed as he noticed him and turned around, getting the boy to stop. “Could you help me for a second. That damn cat is sitting in the tree and refuses to come down and it has my… well, I just need her, alright?”

“Sorry, I can’t”, Adam said and shrugged.

“What? Why? Come on, help your father out. Cat listens to you.”

“I really want to, but I have my hands full.” Adam nodded at the ice cream in his one hand and the soft drink in his other.

“Where the heaven did you even get that?”, Crowley asked incredulous. He waved it off. “Nevermind, why do you even need your hands? Can’t you just tell her to come down?”

Adam lifted his head to look up the tree and he and Billy stood close to the trunk to get a better look at the situation. Connie was too distracted by a pigeon to discover the predator up in the branches. Cat was sitting on a high branch, leisurely watching her spectators, cars, birds or leaves moving in the wind. There was a collar around her neck and a small velvet box dangling from it.

“Did Cat catch a bird?”, Billy asked. “Is that a bird in her mouth? What’s that around her neck?”

“Don’t worry about that. Can you get her down, Adam?”, Crowley tried to change the topic. Adam threw another look at the situation and shook his head.

“No… She’s too far up. Just wait until dinner, then she will come down herself.”

Crowley sighed and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. Crouching down he tried a different idea.

“Can’t you ask your friend, if he can use his dog to get the cat down? Hm? Maybe with some barking?”, Crowley asked and threw a look at Billy, who tried to command Connie to sit down and roll to the side. Adam licked his lips and looked at the soft drink. He and Crowley shared a look and Adam offered his father a sip from the drink.

“Connie is not really trained enough at this state in his education”, Adam said and Crowley almost spit the drink, he had just tried a sip from, out again. He stopped himself from laughing and only grinned into his fist, giving the drink back to Adam. “Also,”, Adam began. “Billy and I’ve been talking and today he is a boy, but some days he might be a girl and then you should call Billy ‘she’ or ‘her’. He showed me the skirt he got and it looks really cool, and his mother even sewed pockets onto it.”

“Pockets”, Crowley repeated and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I see.”

“Pockets are important”, Adam insisted.

“Right. Of course. So’s the other stuff you are telling me. I promise to ask Billy about that in the future, er, he’s Billy all the time?”

Adam nodded.

“He says, Billy is a good name.”

“It certainly is”, Crowley muttered and thought again about his theory that every child, whose name starts with an ‘A’ suffers from panicking parents. He wondered what that meant for children, whose name starts with a ‘B’… did it meant that Susan was on a higher level of parenting than him and the angel?

“Adam?”, Billy called and Adam told the demon that Billy and he would go for another round with Connie. Soon, Crowley was again standing alone on the sidewalk. Pedestrians were mistaking him with someone praying to their tree-god. Cat had stretched out on her branch and did not even acknowledge the distressed demon with a single look. Eventually, it got dark and Billy and Adam went back to Billy’s to watch their superhero-show on the telly, and Crowley was still standing outside, begging Cat to at least give him the box with the ring back, if she was not willing to be part of his amazing proposing-plan. Crowley had to resort to other measures…

Yes, he climbed the tree.

Yes, Cat was fighting him.

Yes, Crowley fell down and directly in front of a group of drunk teenagers.

But at least he got the box with the ring.

 

-//-

 

In summer, darkness comes late, but eventually the only thing lightening up the roof garden were a few lamp posts from the streets and the lanterns hanging from the ceiling in the greenhouse. Crowley was hanging over the garden bench, caressing a wine bottle and indulging in memories of having gotten drunk in the greenhouse before.

“Mama, just killed a man”, he sang quietly as the door to the greenhouse was opened. Crowley peered up and as he realised it was the angel looking for him, he quickly straightened himself up and palpated his jacket for the small velvet box.

“Dear?”, Aziraphale asked and smiled a little as he saw the demon. “There you are. Where have you been all day?”

“I am sorry, angel. I actually wanted to spend time with you, but… things have gotten in the way…”

“It’s alright, dear. I love all the time we’ve been spending together lately; going to the park, having dinner.”

“Isss Adam in bed already?”, Crowley asked flustered.

“Oh no, he wrestled me to the right of staying up late because school is starting soon. He is still up reading comic books with Cat in the book shop.”

“Cat can read?”, Crowley asked and immediately added. “Of course, there’s nothing that cat can’t do, bloody beast.”

“What?”, Aziraphale laughed confused. “Did something happen between you and Cat?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What are you doing up here?”

“Oh… nothing. Just sitting.”

“Can I join you?”

“…sure! Sure”, Crowley said and made space on the bench beside him. Aziraphale walked over and sat down. Crowley offered him the wine bottle and Aziraphale took it with a smile. For a while they just sat there in silence, listening to the quiet traffic noises and also the very false singing of a group of party people walking by.

“Do you remember when we first noticed the roof had a garden?”, Aziraphale asked suddenly and Crowley took in a breath, looking confused. He took his sunglasses off and put them down together with the wine bottle. He glanced around the greenhouse as if he would remember more that way.

“You mean when I tried to burry my failed plants and they betrayed me by only growing better and more beautiful?”

“You realise that killing a plant by burying it, does not actually work?”, Aziraphale retorted. The demon grumbled something. “Actually”, Aziraphale continued and put his hand on Crowley’s to get his full attention. “I wanted to talk about what I had asked you back then, while you were being grumpy about your blossoming plants.”

Crowley looked at him dumbly.

“What?”

“Back then I had been worried that other people would not see us as a real family and that we would stand out, remember? I was worried people would realise something weird was going on and question us about it, make us trouble.”

Crowley tried to recall that day. It had been some hot summer’s day, Adam still tiny enough to give him a bath every few hours when he smeared his whole face with cake or got sand in all his clothes. Crowley had started putting up grave stones for the plants that had disappointed him and they had grown to a beautiful garden. Only later he had gotten around to build the greenhouse. That exact day… Crowley had been there… Aziraphale had been there… talking about… Crowley snapped his eyes wide open as the angel suddenly took his hand between both of his and let something small fall into the demon’s hand. The angel looked nervous. Crowley wanted to say something, but he was frozen to the spot.

Aziraphale took a breath.

“I had asked you, if you think we should get married to look more like a normal family and you had said that this would only raise more questions as marrying had been illegal for us.”

Crowley stared at him. He desperately wanted to fumble for the small box in his jacket.

“It is still illegal for us”, he breathed not knowing what else to say. “For angels and demons, I mean.”

Aziraphale nodded and then shook his head.

“I don’t care.”

Crowley huffed out a disbelieving laugh.

“So what?”

“So, will you marry me, Crowley?”, the angel asked and let go of the demon’s hand just enough to give the gaze free on the ring lying in it. Crowley stared down at it like it was the key to something he had wanted all his life. He looked back up at the angel and shouted in panic:

“NO! I mean YES! WAIT”

He hastily closed his fingers around the ring in his hand and searched with the other one in his jacket. Finally, he found the stupid little box and, more threw than gave it, to Aziraphale, who, despite being in great confusion, managed to catch the box and now stared at it first in confusion, then realisation.

“Will you –“, Crowley began.

“YES!”

“YOU WILL?”

“YES, YES OF COURSE, I WILL, MY DEAR!”

Almost crying out in relief the demon took the box back from the angel, pulled the lid open and the ring out of it. The angel was already holding his hand out, so Crowley just grabbed it and shakily pushed the ring on the right finger. Aziraphale helped him with his own ring before Crowley could let him fall on the floor and then they were hugging, holding each other close. Crowley pressed his nose into the angel’s neck and stared through blurry eyes at the ring on his own hand on the angel’s back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my finally some good fluff
> 
> Dear Readers,
> 
> I hope you are all still interested in this light and cheesy slice of life story!  
> Promise, next chapter we get a little bit of drama mixed into it!
> 
> Love,


	36. Part 33: Toast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or the chapter titel I had in mind first:
> 
> "Porn or not Porn, that is the question."

“Can I go over to Billy’s tomorrow; so, we can watch that super hero movie together?”, Adam asked as he dug into his mac and cheese. Aziraphale kept a close eye on him as he had hidden yellow paprika in between the noodles. He tried to trick Adam into eating more vegetables that way, but the boy was just so damn perceptive.

“Sure,”, he said a little distracted, while never taking his eyes off the piece of food Adam was just forking up. “Aren’t we meeting them for lunch tomorrow anyway?”

“We are?”, Crowley asked and looked up from his empty plate. Aziraphale gave him a long and exasperated look. They had just sat down to eat and the angel did not understand, how the demon could already be done with his meal. He himself preferred to savour the taste, instead of choking it down like a snake devouring a bird egg. Aziraphale told himself he would have to watch the demon next time they ate to observe how he did it. Usually, he was so captured by the treasure that a good meal is, that he never payed attention to the demon while eating.

“We are meeting them for lunch tomorrow. Susan invited us over, because Greg promised to cook and she wanted some company while laughing about him”, Aziraphale clarified.

“Bit discouraging, isn’t it?”, Crowley mumbled and proceeded to fill his glass with wine.

“I thought so, too, but apparently Greg has been continuously criticising her cooking for containing ‘small green specks’”, the angel clarified making air quotes around ‘small green specks’.

“Basil?”, Crowley asked with a scrunched up nose.

“I asked that, too. Apparently Susan is using an Italian spice mixture that is the same she uses on her home-made pizzas.”

“I like her home-made pizzas”, Crowley noted.

“Very balanced”, Aziraphale confirmed before continuing: “Well, as I wanted to say, Susan told me that Greg never complains about ‘small green specks’ on the pizza, but complains about them, when they are in other meals. So, she told him to ‘shut up and eat his meal or cook himself’, because she knows how difficult it is to make healthy food look tasty, and when Greg said, he did not think it was difficult, she dared him to cook for once himself and invited us over.” He took another fork of mac and cheese. “She asked us to bring popcorn.”

“Popcorn for lunch?” Crowley raised his brows.

“Just as an appetiser.”

“Healthy things are gross”, Adam grumbled and stirred in his mac and cheese. Aziraphale kept a close eye on him. Suddenly, Adam seemed to remember, what they had been talking about:

“But the movie is aired in the evening, not at lunch”, he groaned. “Like every cool movie. No cool movie is played at lunch time.”

“Is this like a law?”, Crowley asked.

“Well, we can’t meet them for lunch AND for dinner”, Aziraphale argued. “That would look like we are just slumming!”

“What’s ‘slumming’?”, Adam asked.

“That’s when you live on other people’s expense. Anyway, I don’t want you staying up that late anymore, now that school is starting soon. You gotta get used to a normal sleep schedule again. Now eat your mac and cheese, my dear.”

“Really? Isn’t slumming, when you have one of these fancy baths in a swamp?”, Crowley asked with a wrinkled nose.

“No, I don’t know where you heard that, dear.”

“I heard Billy’s dad calling Connie a ‘bloody freeloader’, when he fell over the dog a few days back. Connie had been panicking, because auntie Susan had started cleaning again with the vacuum cleaner and Connie’s a bit scared of that noise. I think, Connie thinks its some kind of monster coming for him. You know, dogs are great, but they aren’t really all that smart when it comes to modern technology”, Adam explained and put a fork full of disguised paprika into his mouth. He began chewing and soon wrinkled his nose. “The noodles are quite crispy today, Papa.”

“I may have undercooked them”, Aziraphale fibbed. The demon raised his eyebrows at him and Aziraphale gave him a stern look to shut his mouth. Last thing he needed was Adam finding out about the vegetable conspiracy and losing his trust completely in his parents’ cooking. Going to bed without a meal could be quite fatal for a growing boy.

Luckily, Adam did not suspect anything, but only chewed solemnly on his meal. His eyes fell on his Dada’s hand, which he used to prop up his face. Adam found, something was off with it and stared at the hand for a while wondering what it could be.

“Don’t forget to drink your water”, Aziraphale told him.

Adam turned to look at him. The angel was holding out a carafe of fresh water. Adam put his fork down to take it and noticed that there was a new ring on the angel’s hand. Lost in thought, Adam held the water carafe and stared back at the demon’s hand. The ring. That was, what he found different.

“Bloody hell!”, he exclaimed suddenly.

“Watch your language, boy”, Aziraphale told him, turning to Crowley: “I tell you, he learns those words from Gregory.”

Crowley shrugged.

“You certainly forbade ME to teach him words like that.”

“Dada! Papa!” Adam slammed his hands on the table after putting the water carafe aside.

“Adam! Be more careful with the table!”, Aziraphale scolded him, but Adam only looked at him like he had lost his mind.

“The table? This is about more important things than the table!” He looked between his two parents, who did seem to lack every bit of understanding for his sudden outburst. “Did you get married without telling me?”

 

“Errr…”, Crowley said looking like someone that had just chased a winning lotto-ticket through half the town just to see it being run over by a truck and shredded to pieces. He looked over to the angel, who looked at him like he had just seen Crowley holding his winning lotto-ticket into the wind just to have it flying off.

“No”, Crowley told Adam, who looked like he did not believe him at all. “We did not get married. We were just… well, did you notice that they legalised same-sex marriage in England?”

“Yeah, I heard you and aunty Susan talk about it. I thought, you would now finally get married; so, we can be a real family.”

“You don’t need to be married to be a real family”, Aziraphale injected. “But, I know what you mean and yes, we’ve already been talking about it and we…”, he trailed off, looked at the demon, who smiled, and took his hand. “We decided to get married.”

“That’s awesome!”, Adam exclaimed and went in less than a second from enthusiastic to disappointed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”, he asked like a little kicked puppy.

“We wanted to tell you! I am sorry we didn’t until now, but… well, everything happened just so quickly. We wanted to tell you, we just didn’t know when”, the angel reassured him, wanting to get up and hug the boy.  
He remembered just in time that Adam now felt too old to be hugged more than once per day and per parent and Aziraphale had already used that right today to hug him good morning. So, using his last resort, he turned to the demon and told him:

“Dear, go hug Adam! I already hugged him once today!”

“I can’t!”, Crowley exclaimed and raised his hands in helplessness.

“Why not?”, Aziraphale asked incredulous.

“I already hugged him when he helped me find my sunglasses today!”

“Oh my god”, Aziraphale said like a man noticing the huge hole in his fisher boat.

“Papa, Dada, it’s alright!”, the boy tried to calm them both down. “You don’t need to hug me! I am too old for that! Just tell me, are you married yet? You are wearing the rings, aren’t you? Does that mean you are married?”

“Not yet. These are engagement rings”, Aziraphale explained.

“Does that mean you are getting married tomorrow?”

“Er…well, maybe not tomorrow.”

“But I am invited, right? You are not going to get married without me?”

“No, of course not! You are invited!”, the demon and the angel both hurried to answer.

“Good, because I would be very cross, if I wasn’t.” Adam hesitated and added slyly. “In fact, I am already a little cross.”

“Oh, I am so sorry, Adam, I”, Aziraphale began, but Adam interrupted him:

“But I won’t be cross anymore, if I could just watch this superhero movie with Billy tomorrow…” He looked at his father with even bigger puppy eyes. Aziraphale narrowed his own eyes and ruminated about it.

“Fine…”, he finally said. “You can watch that movie with Billy.”

“Awesome! Thanks, Papa!” Adam dug into his mac and cheese and took another bite. He frowned. “Are there vegetables in this?”

 

-//-

 

“Oh my god, you still have this sacrilegious statue”, Greg choked and tried to steady himself by holding on tight to his glass of sparkling wine.

“It’s not sacrilegious, it’s art”, Crowley corrected him. They were having a ‘garden party’ on the roof, which Susan called an ‘engagement party’, but the demon refused to acknowledge that. He did not understand the purpose of engagement parties. They simply invited some people that he found not as annoying as the rest of the world to tell them that he and the angel would get married; so, they would not feel guilty by not inviting them to the wedding itself.

“It’s plain pornography”, Greg contradicted. He looked around the roof top, where Billy, Adam and a few more of their friends were playing with the dog, Cat was trying to steal snacks from the table and Aziraphale was talking to the other parents about literature. Crowley asked himself, if other parents, too, only had friends that were the parents of their own child’s friends, or if other people were capable of making friends outside of kindergarten and elementary school.

“You are having pornography in your garden and the children can see it”, Greg went on.

“No, look I finally made a little tag for it”, Crowley said and pointed at the tiny golden plate on the socket the statue was placed on. Greg bent down to read the inscription. It read:

“Fighting Angels”

Greg straightened up again and gave Crowley a contemplative look.

“You know, I did this once, too, when Susan found a porn video that… er, a friend forgot at my place… and when she questioned me I told her it was a workout-video. Didn’t work.”

“Are you leaving porn lying around in a house my kid comes over to visit?”, Crowley asked coldly.

“Don’t worry. That was long before the boys were born.”

Crowley huffed and turned away to look for someone else to talk to. He spotted Cat sitting under the table with the snacks and fishing for a stuffed egg. He decided that was good enough and made a beeline for her. He guessed bonding with his son’s pet was a better idea than getting caught talking porn with Greg.

Just as he was crouching down to defend the stuffed eggs from Cat’s claws, someone spoke to him behind his back:

“So, which plan was it?”

Crowley turned his head to see an annoyingly grinning Susan.

“Excuse me, I was just talking to Cat”, Crowley pointed out her rudeness.

“Obviously”, Susan humoured him. “Now tell me. Was it plan C? Plan D? Plan E?”

“We didn’t have a plan E.”

“Well, because I really had hope in you not messing up more than four times. So?”

“It was not plan C.”

“Really? Plan D?”

“I did not get to do plan D, because…” Crowley sighed. He knew, if he told her the truth she would never live that down. “…because that bastard of an angel beat me to it.”

“He what?”, Susan asked, completely ignoring the pet name Crowley used.

“He proposed to me, alright?”

“Oh my fucking god.”

“Hey! Don’t say ‘fucking’ when children are around, because I am not allowed to; so, nobody is allowed!”, the demon exclaimed. He was really cross with the fact that the angel was allowed to talk about Bebop and therelike around Adam, totally messing with his knowledge of great music. Meanwhile, the demon himself was forbidden from using accurate words in situations that called for them.

“Oh my forking god, I”

“Really? Forking?”

“I can’t believe it! Zira proposed to you? He?” She put her hand on her hip and her lips in a thin line. “Honestly, I don’t know why I am surprised. I always suspected he was the boss in your relationship.”

“EXCUSE ME?”

“Crow- I mean, Anthony, dear, would you please watch the stuffed eggs? I think Cat is going for them!”, Aziraphale called from the other side of the roof top and Crowley immediately turned around to see a stuffed egg falling from the table and being snatched by a tiny paw. The egg disappeared under the table cloth and wet slurping sounds emerged. Crowley made a face.

“That egg’s lost”, Susan stated. “But we have more important things to do anyway.”

“We do?”

“Of course! First you have to tell me every juicy detail of the proposal. Then we have to go on planning the wedding. You know, the basics, when it’s gonna be, where, how many guests, the cake, the flowers, the suits and so on, but before that LET’S HAVE A TOAST ON THE LOVELY HUSBANDS TO BE”, she announced on the top of her lungs.

All the guests on the rooftop turned to her and nodding, and agreeing, reached for their glasses of sparkling wine, and the children insisted of holding up their orange juices.

“Bless the both of you”, Susan said, after the crowd of guests had bullied Aziraphale into standing next to Crowley and Adam standing in the very front of spectators.

“You are like the best friends that I have in this town”, Susan confessed. “and it is truly so much fun and always such a joy to spend time with you. Even with same-sex marriage being illegal for so long, I always thought of you as a married couple and I am so glad that this can finally come true. May there be no more foes against your love from now on”, she said and raised her glass.  
Adam applauded them, the other guests followed Susan’s example and toasted to the two ethereal beings. Crowley and Aziraphale smiled a little bitterly at the toast, secretly thinking that, even if England had legalised their marriage, heaven and hell did not even know about the events happening right now and that sorrow was yet to come. Still, they fought those worries back for at least this moment and thanked Susan for the kind words. 

“Now, kiss”, Susan demanded, having the time of her life, and Crowley did not have any reason to object. Smiling softly he kissed the angel on the cheek, and kept hugging him with one arm for much longer.

An even better way of avoiding all attempts of socialising than talking to the cat that meanwhile stole like half the snack buffet.


	37. Part 34: Interruptions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: I started to write this fanfic after reading the book and before the series was released. This means that the portrayal of all the characters is based on my personal thoughts and headcanons after reading the book. This is the way I imagined heaven and hell to be like in the GO-Universe, and does not necessarily match with the portrayal in the series.

Heaven. Lots of blue. White. Very bright and… plain. Plain scent. Plain pattern. Silence. The hollow echo of shoes. A window. No, not a window. A …bit that was not… here, but farther out there and you could stand in front of it, next to it, look out into the blue sky and white clouds. So much blue.

Two angels were talking to each other.

One of them asked:

“Have you heard anything from the angel stationed on earth?”

And the other said:

“Who?”

“You know, the angel Aziraphale. They were the guard of the eastern gate back in the days of Eden”, the first angel said and lightened… not a cigarette. It couldn’t have been a cigarette since both heaven and hell are non-smoking areas, …but something like that. The smoke blew out of the… window anyway… and coloured one of the clouds grey.

“What are they doing on earth?”

“…keeping watch, I heard.”

The other angel shifted from one foot to the other and nodded reluctantly.

“That’s good. Good. Somebody should keep an eye on everything, I guess.”

They stood for a while in silence.

“So, you did not hear from them?”, the first one asked again.

“What? Me?” The other one seemed surprised. “No, no, I did not hear anything. Is that bad?”

The first angel thought about it for a while.

“I suspect not. Must mean that everything is as it should be. Everything… going alright.”

“The great plan!”, the second angel exclaimed like someone that finally found the ground under their feet again.

“Yes, yes, the great plan”, the first angel chuckled. “With the Antichrist and all. Shouldn’t take too long anymore.”

“Two years roughly.”

“Yes, yes…”

Silence.

The second angel now swayed slightly back and forth on their feet.

“Can’t wait”, they said to fill the awkward silence.

The first angel gave the other one an approving look, and threw their not-a-cigarette-but-something-that-smokes-anyway out in the blue sky. Somewhere fell a shooting star, but nobody noticed it in the daylight. The angels left as their break ended.

 

-//-

 

Many people think that everything in the world has its direct opposite.

This sounds very reasonable, but only until you try to find an example for it and realise, there are none.  
One of the most nerve racking things is to exactly know that we do not live in a binary world, but be surrounded by people that think we do and want to have a discussion about it. It’s a bit like a group of people trying to come to the conclusion, if potatoes better animals than peaches or not, while you have to sit there silently, raising reluctantly your hand, because you want to say that neither potatoes nor peaches are animals, that they are in fact a type of vegetable, but nobody is listening to you.

Aziraphale had once visited a book convention with many writers reading from their books, reading short stories and talking about their working process. He had sat silently in one of the chairs, sipped from his cup of tea and listened to a discussion between a writer and a few of her readers. Somehow, they had gotten on to the topic of “What even is a book?”

One person had said that everything can be a book, if only it contains written words.

“A menu card is a book, too, then?”, another had joked and then they had launched themselves into the consideration of picture books and audio books and what even are words, anyway?  
At this point, Aziraphale had found the discussion still quite reasonable. But then a man had raised his voice over all the others and had asked like someone who had just an epiphany:

“What would be the opposite of a book?”

And Aziraphale had only blinked slowly as he found this was one of the moments a speaker had spoken before thinking first and would surely in a second want to take their words back, apologizing for the fallout of their brain. Surprisingly, the speaker continued:

“As we live in a binary world, everything has its direct opposite, yes? Men are the opposite of women, blue is the opposite of red, but what would be the opposite of a book?”

And to Aziraphales astonishment the other people had latched onto this topic! He had sat there and marvelled at how anybody could find at least one prove to back up at least one of the speaker’s examples for direct opposites.

“Men have noses, women not? Men walk on two legs and women do not? Men are humans and women not?”, he had thought to himself and desperately wanted to speak up, but the people were so caught up in their conversation, they had not noticed his appalled face. So, eventually he had emptied his cup of tea and left the discussion, shaking his head in exasperation.

Those kinds of people usually think that angels and demons are direct opposites, too. They tend to forget that demons are just angels that were sacked. 

They still had the same education and upbringing.

 

-//-

 

Aziraphale dusted the shelves in the book shop. There was not actually time for that as they had to leave, or had had to leave like twenty minutes ago, but Crowley was still taking his time.  
Adam sat on the floor in front in the hallway and cuddled with Cat; eventhough, Aziraphale had told him to keep his clothes free from cat hairs for at least one day.  
Lost in thought, the angel continued dusting the towers of books, the comfortable chairs and went on dusting Adam himself, who laughed and tried to get away from the tickling feathers.

“Stop, stop, you make me all dusty!”, the boy laughed.

“Don’t worry, I cleaned the duster beforehand”, Aziraphale told him smiling, and Adam asked, if he could dust Cat off. Aziraphale thought, Adam meant the fur clinging to the boy’s trousers and jacket, but he had thought wrong. Cat shimmied for the duster, clawing on it and soon there were feathers clinging to Adam in addition to the cat hairs.

“You’re a horrible tiny beast”, Aziraphale scolded the feline pet.

Finally, Crowley emerged from somewhere in the flat, walking up to them in black slacks, a red shirt that might just have belonged to a pirate or a Victorian vampire and a black velvet vest over it. He did not yet wear his sunglasses yet, his eyes seemed to be searching for them or at least something and his hair looked… sleek.

“Are you ready to go, dear?”, Aziraphale asked and the demon looked at him.

“You are wearing your kilt”, Crowley noticed.

“Thank you for noticing. You look good, my dear.”

“Well, thank you very much, too, angel”, Crowley replied and gave the angel a kiss. They then packed up everything they needed, put Cat on her leash and walked outside to the Bentley parked next to the sidewalk. Crowley drove them through town until he magically found a parking lot directly in front of a boring looking building. He parked and they got out to walk up the stairs to the glass doors in the entryway. A sign next to the door said “No Dogs” and Crowley pointed at it laughing and showing it to Adam.

“Look! you can come in with us!”, Adam told Cat, who jumped up the stairs and pulled the boy behind her on the leash. They all walked in together and looked for the counter of the registry office to ask for someone to civilly marry them.

 

-//-

 

“Susan is going to kill us”, Aziraphale murmured as they waited in the sitting area to be called for their appointment. Adam was sitting next to them and would probably already be bored if not for Cat, who was sitting on his lap and tried to escape with all her might. Adam was talking soothingly to her, trying to calm her down by commenting the watercolour pictures hanging on the walls.

“Doesn’t that one look like you?”, he asked her and pointed at one of the pictures. “It looks exactly what you would look like, if you had eight legs and were a blue elephant.”

“Aaaah I don’t think it’s going to be that bad”, Crowley said leaned back, answering to the angel’s concerns.

“Of course, you are not worried”, the angel retorted. “She isn’t after you but me, after all.”

“Isn’t that old talk?”

„Old talk? Only at the engagement party she threatened to kill me, if we would not invite her to the wedding.”

“Yeah, well, she was obviously expecting us to be… romantic, have a white wedding in a church or something; nevermind, the fact that neither you or nor I are particularly fond of that idea. Have you seen her notes on the wedding buffet? We could have fed a whole army with the different types of cakes she was considering.”

“Well, a buffet wouldn’t have been too bad”, Aziraphale mumbled.

“You can have your buffet any day”, Crowley promised the angel, but his voice was already drowned by the cracking speaker, and a deep inauspicious voice droned:

“CROWLEY…”

The angel and the demon froze.

“Is that us?”, Adam asked looking into the air as if looking for the transparent person speaking. Aziraphale and Crowley first looked at the boy, then at each other. Already the voice continued:

“I HAVEN’T HEARD OF YOU IN A WHILE, CROWLEY”,

and Crowley hurried to tell Aziraphale to get Adam out of the waiting area.

“Oh my god!”, Aziraphale exclaimed artificially and ushered Adam to get up from his seat. “I think Cat might want to use the toilet!”, he shouted in an attempt to drown the voice from the speakers.

“What? Really, Cat?”, Adam asked confused, but got up nevertheless. Cat herself was up to anything that provided her with more movement and hopped from the boy’s lap to pull them out of the building again. As the speaker droned on, Aziraphale did so, too:

“Just look at that poor Cat! She really wants to go for a walk! Don’t worry about our appointment, I am sure we have to wait for a while longer! Waiting times always take so long, so long waiting times! Wouldn’t you rather go for a walk, Adam? Your Dada will wait for us here!”, he kept talking and talking as loud as possible until he and the boy were out of earshot. Crowley meanwhile sat still and shook, fiddling with his hands in his lap, while staring up into the air.

“CROWLEY?”, the voice of Satan asked angrily. “DID YOU NOT LISTEN?”

“Er, er, yes, I did, but there’s been so much noise here, could you repeat?”

“I HAVE ASKED YOU ABOUT THE STATE OF MY SON. IT HAS BEEN QUITE A WHILE SINCE YOU HAVE REPORTED BACK TO ME. WHAT IS GOING ON, CROWLEY?”

“Oh, er, everything alright! Everything alright!”, Crowley assured to the empty hallway. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on the Antichrist. He is growing up wonderfully evil…”

“HAS HE KILLED ANYBODY YET?”

“Killed? No, I don’t think so. I mean, his powers aren’t fully enfolded yet, but he has been stepping on a snails and slugs since he can walk, and I am sure, he will still kill a whole bunch of people when the end of the world is here.”

“VERY WELL. LISTEN, I INSTRUCTED HASTUR AND LIGUR TO SEND A HELLHOUND TO HIS SIDE ON HIS ELEFENTH BIRTHDAY. THE BOY THEN MUST GIVE THE HOUND A NAME. THIS WILL BE INEVITABLE TO INITIATE THE END TIMES.”

“A Hellhound?”, Crowley asked. “That, er… that sounds great. I am sure nothing else is suitable for the son of Satan.”

“AND REMEMBER”, Satan paused and Crowley forgot to breath. “WHEN THE WAR BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL BEGINS, I EXPECT YOU TOO, TO FIGHT AGAINST THE ARMY OF ANGELS.”

“Of course! Of course!”, Crowley reassured the empty hallway, before it suddenly cracked again. The hallway was flooded with sound and air and atmosphere again as if the demon and the voice of Satan had shortly existed in a vacuum away from everything earthly. Briefly, Crowley wondered, if Adam would have been able to move, if he would have been a normal human, or if he would have been frozen to the spot like a part of the furniture, part of the background. But then, Cat had been able to leave, too.  
Crowley breathed in, sucked air into his lungs, kept breathing in until he remembered that the air had to circulate to be soothing. Somewhere a door was opened and people entered the hallway again, passing by, not paying attention to the demon sitting alone in one of the seats, having a mental break down. The voice of a woman spoke through the speaker and asked for Mister Parkinson. Crowley pulled his hands through his hair and groaned. 

“Why did he have to tell me this now?”, he moaned into his hands and got up from the chair. He had to look for the angel and the Antichrist, making sure that Adam had not noticed anything strange that could scar him for life. It was way too early for him to find out his true heritage… well, two years too early. Crowley made a face at the realization that they only had so little time left.

 

-//-

 

He left the building and as he sauntered down the stairs, he noticed not two, but four people waiting for him. He raised his eyebrows.

“Susan? What are you doing here?”

“You!”, she yelled as she noticed him and walked up to him following her pointing finger. Surprised, he could only stand there, raising his hands in defense as she poked her finger into his chest. “I am especially cross with you! Getting married without telling me! I had to track you down! Do you know how undignified it is to wait by the window until your friends, your FRIENDS leave the house; so, you can follow them!”

“Is this a rhetoric question?”, Crowley asked. “And by the way, you knew, we were getting married. You were on our engagement party!”

“Mum and I have played a fine game”, Billy intercepted from the sidewalk, where she was playing rock-paper-scissors with Adam. Crowley only guessed, Billy was a girl today, as she wore a red skirt with sunflowers on it, but he was not too sure. “We made can telephones and then I waited at the window at the back door and she waited at the window at the front door and we sent Connie back and forth with little messages in his collar whenever we thought you were leaving the house.”

Crowley’s eyebrows climbed even higher as he listened to the girl and then gave Susan a look.

“You’ve been snooping after us?”

“We were spies”, Billy said and put a finger on her lips. “Shhht!”

“Rock!”, Adam shouted. “I win!”

“A fine parent you are”, Aziraphale said with a nasty look in his eyes.

“Oh, be quiet”, Susan said and took the finger off the demon’s chest. “Can we now go on with this ordeal and get you two married? I haven’t run out of the house in my house slippers just to follow you for nothing!”

Crowley looked down and inspected her slippers that resembled stuffed bunnies.

“Animals are not allowed inside”, he said pointing at the “No Dogs” sign behind him.

“Oh, bite me”, Susan said and passed him to enter the building. Aziraphale just shrugged and told the children to come back inside, taking the demon’s hand and pulling him along.

“Is all sorted with… your boss?”, the angel whispered to him as they returned to the waiting area.

“Yes. Did Adam hear anything?”, Crowley whispered back.

“I don’t think so. I was able to distract him and then he distracted himself as he saw Billy and Susan coming.”

“Good.”

They reached the waiting area and just as they wanted to sit down, the speaker cracked anew, giving Crowley almost a heart attack. Luckily, it was the voice of the women again, calling Mister Fell and Mister Crowley into another room to make their vows. Submitting their papers had been easily solved with a little miracle, and nobody questioned their guests or the cat and dog they brought to keep them company.  
They stood in front of a wooden counter, the middle-aged man behind it asking them to state their names, they answered his questions, repeated his words, ignored Susan’s sniffling and finally signed a somewhere official looking document. Crowley’s hand shook a little over the paper as if he feared to go up in flames the second, he would sign his name.

“What’s a little fire to a demon, anyway?”, he thought to himself and signed his real name. He then took the angel into his arms. Aziraphale smiled and put a hand on the demon’s cheek. “You look good, angel”, Crowley told him.

“It’s the tartan, isn’t it?”

“Yes”, Crowley said and kissed him.

“Stay strong. You can cuddle them later”, Susan whispered to herself, one hand on Billy’s shoulder and one on Adam’s. Crowley sighed, but had to smile as the angel chuckled against his cheek. Both of them could not shake the feeling of just having outrun some big tragedy; so, they just accepted the feeling of lightheadedness and spared their worries for another day.  
They both gasped in surprise as a heavy weight crashed into them, but then realized it was only Adam hugging them. They had some struggle pulling each one arm free of the boy’s embrace to return the hug, and had to laugh when Adam mumbled:

“One extra hug, I allow today, but no more.”


	38. Part 35: Whispers in the dark

“Two”, Adam murmured while typing the number into his calculator. He was very concentrated, sticking his tongue out between his lips. Meanwhile, Anathema had her elbow propped up on the kitchen table and her face in her hand. She had come directly from a long day in school to one of her tutoring lessons. Watching the boy, she felt her eyelids dropping and her whole posture sinking towards the table.

“Plus”, Adam continued, searching with his eyes and fingers for the sign on the calculator. Anathema deeply regretted that she had let him use his new device. Apparently, when he had returned to school this year, his teacher had insisted that every pupil had to own one to get used to it. Anathema asked herself, why she had spent hours and hours teaching him adding up, just to be now exposed to this torture.

“Two.” Adam typed the number in. He looked back at the exercise sheet he had to do for his homework. He searched for the calculation he was just working on, read “equals” and searched for the sign on the calculator. Fascinated, he stared at the result and proceeded to write it down. He stared proudly at his calculator as if it was the oracle of Delphi. “This makes way more fun than doing it in your head.”

“I know mental arithmetic isn’t the most fun,”, Anathema admitted. “but you know that you are not allowed to use the calculator at your exam, right?”

Adam looked at her in shock.

“But the teacher gave it to me!”

“The teacher also gave you a math book, but you are still not allowed to actually use it during the exam.”

“That’s so stupid”, Adam pouted and put the calculator away.

“Don’t freak out. I know you are perfectly able to add two and two without a calculator. We’ve been practicing way more complicated calculations already.”

“But I dun wan toooo”, Adam whined and put his forehead on the table. Anathema gently pulled his homework out of his eventual tears’ reach. The boy really started fake crying and Anathema felt her headache coming back.

“Look. I am tired. You are tired. So, let’s get this over with, alright?

“Hello, my dears, how are you doing?”, Aziraphale asked as he entered the kitchenette to check in on them. He tried to make it not too obvious; so, he pretended to get a glass of lemonade. When his eyes fell on his son; though, he did a double take. “Oh my, are we getting emotional again?”

“Papa, math is stupid.”

“Alright, Adam, but remember: if you don’t finish your homework until seven, it will be too late to go to the cinema.” Aziraphale took a glass out of the cupboard, remembered that Crowley might also want to have a glass of lemonade, and took another glass.

Adam’s head shot up from the table.

“What? But we have to go to the cinema! Billy said she really wanted to go!”

“Well,”, Aziraphale inspected the options of drinks he had. Orange, apple… he reached for the grapefruit lemonade. “then I suppose Billy and her parents have to go without us.”

“WHAT?”

“Have fun with your homework”, the angel called over his shoulder while he carried the two glasses out of the kitchen. Anathema stared after him with her head still in her hand. She was pretty sure opposite of her the boy had an existential crisis. So, she pulled herself together and straightened up. 

“Alright. Let’s get this shit done.”

Adam inhaled. He wanted to shriek at the fact that his tutor had just used the word ‘shit’, but he really wanted to go to the cinema; so, he had to pull himself together. He grabbed his papers and put his hands on it.

“Let’s get these calculations done!”

“That’s the attitude.”

 

-//-

 

“What are we even watching?”, Crowley asked as they stood in line for the tickets. He and Aziraphale were standing arm in arm, posing as an eccentric gay couple that was a few decades too late to the movies, because they could not decide what to wear. Although, that was true for Crowley, who had finally decided to wear a long black dress, Aziraphale wore his usual trench coat and tartan vest underneath.

“Let me have a look”, Aziraphale murmured and pulled the program out of his vest. Greg, who was standing behind them, gave him a weird look, because he had never seen someone with a program sheet in the cinema. The people in line before them finished purchasing their tickets and they had to step up to the counter.

“Good evening, my lady”, Aziraphale greeted the saleswoman. “We would like to buy”, he turned around to count how many tickets they would need. There were Susan and Greg right behind him, Adam and Billy, of course, and - “Anathema?”, he asked confused. “What are you doing here?”

Anathema perked up and looked over to him. From the looks she had just been conversing with Adam and Billy about the movie posters on the wall.

“Mr. Crowley offered to drive me home after the tutoring lesson.”

“Did I?”, Crowley asked surprised. He started palpating his chest, his pockets, his arms as if he was searching for a missing body part. He was sure this would count as a good deed and he did not want to be associated with something like that. He must have been unwell.

“Yes, but I think you kind of forgot when your neighbours came over to go to the cinema. You told us to get in the car, but drove directly here instead to my house.”

“Well, why didn’t you say anything?”, he exclaimed incredulous. It would have been on the way, if the he only had not forgotten to throw her out of the car in the right moment. It could have practically been half a kidnapping! Now, he would have to go out of his way to bring her home OR invite her to the cinema.

“I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t think you’d forget and because Adam wanted to show me the movie posters”, Anathema retorted as if it was obvious.

“Well, then there is nothing we can do”, Aziraphale decided. “You’ll just have to join us for the movie.”

“Wicked”, Anathema said and turned to Billy, who was pulling her sleeve.

“Look! He has a chainsaw coming out of his hat! Can we watch that movie?”, Billy asked and pointed at a poster with a screaming man wearing indeed a very strange hat. Aziraphale furrowed his brows as he inspected the poster with the title “Inspector Gadget” and found it maybe a little too violent for the children.

“Or can we watch this movie?”, Adam asked and pointed at another poster with even more strange looking men on it. “Look, that woman in the middle looks like you, Anathema.”

Anathema inspected the woman with black hair and dark eyeliner under her eyes. The poster said “Mystery Men”.

“Mystery Men? I’d prefer to solve the mystery of that lady in the middle”, she commented.

“No”, Aziraphale murmured wanting to stay on the safe side. It was one thing to buy his son socks with whales on them, because his tutor was telling him about things like climate change and extinction, – it was bad enough, the boy believed in evolution in the first place, no matter how often Aziraphale mentioned that the dinosaurs had just been a practical joke on God’s side – but it was another to expose him to the depressing culture of goth. He looked over to Crowley for support, who looked like he was thinking the same. Goth reminded him too much of home.

“What about the nice movie with the mouse wearing clothes?”, the angel asked, pointing at a poster with the title “Stuart Little”. Adam made a face.

“That’s a children’s movie.”

“You are children”, Susan intercepted.

“What?”, Adam sounded honestly surprised. “No, I am not? I am nine! I’m no longer a child!”

“Alright, alright, alright”, Susan calmed him down. “So, no Little Stuart,”, she looked at the unhappy face of Aziraphale, “no Secret Men, no Doctor Device”

“That’s my grandma”, Anathema commented. Susan turned to look at her.

“What?”

“My grandma is Doctor Device. She’s got a PhD in history.”

“Your last name is ‘Device’, young lady?”, Susan asked with her eyebrows just under her hairline.

“Yes. What do you think who invented and named the first device? Some ancestor of mine is where the name came from.”

“That’s not how”, Susan began, but let the topic drop. She waved her hand and directed her attention back to the woman behind the counter, who had seemingly taken the holdup in the line as a chance to play Solitaire on the computer. “I am very sorry for the slowdown”, Susan apologized and put her hands on the counter. “What other movies do you play tonight than the movie with the mouse, the Mysterious Men and Doctor Device?”

The woman looked up and pointed at a poster to her right.

“Haunted Hill.”

They inspected the poster with the giant red handprint on it. Susan turned back to the saleswoman.

“That does not look like a kids’ movie”, she complained.

“It’s not. It’s a horror movie.”

“Then why did you suggest it in the first place? Didn’t you hear how we were debating about a movie appropriate for our children?”

“Excuse me, I don’t listen in on private conversations.”

“But I do”, the guy in the line behind them interjected. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and was tapping annoyedly with his foot. “Could you please move on now?”

The angel gave him an apologetic nod and turned back to the saleswoman, asking for a kids’ movie. The woman pointed at a poster to her left. They turned to look at it. The adults began nodding.

“Yes, yes, that looks like the kind of movie the children could watch.”

“Maybe I should have just walked home”, Anathema murmured to herself. She thought of escaping, but it was Friday evening and she had just spent over an hour trying to get a boy under tears to do his math homework. Oh, sure, Adam had been brave. He had cried the tears of a hero and she had done him the favour of letting him write the numbers on what they called the “cry-paper”, which was more or less soaked by the end of their tutoring lesson, while she had copied his solutions to his official exercise sheet. Now, she could really go for a free movie, even if it featured animated robots.

“We would like to have…”, Susan turned around to count them all. “Five adult tickets and two children’s tickets, please.”

The saleswoman handed them the tickets with a bored “Cinema 3” and turned to attend to the customers next in line, who were looking less than amused.

“I go and buy the popcorn”, Crowley decided and let go of the angel’s arm. Greg was sent after him to help carry everything.

 

-//-

 

The seating arrangements could have been perfect with Crowley and Aziraphale on one side of the two children and Susan and Greg on the other side. But, instead, there was also Anathema and there was some struggle getting her into the seating arrangements. Quite so, that a little dispute erupted of Adam and Billy not wanting her to sit in between them, but still next to them, but of course, she could not sit next to both of them at the same time. After some time, Anathema handed her popcorn to the person next to her, Greg, stretched her leg over the seat and climbed into the row behind them that was completely empty. Then she turned to take her popcorn back and flopped down in the comfortable red seat.

“I’ll just sit here”, she informed them and threw a popcorn into the air to catch it with her mouth. Both Susan and Aziraphale gave her a disapproving look for that move, because they just knew that it would result into a lot of popcorn on the floor because the children would try to copy her.

“Well, that’s been settled”, Crowley decided and patted the seat next to himself. “Sit down, angel, or you miss the truly hilarious advertisement for vacuum cleaners.”

Sighing the angel sat down, but his mood was immediately improved as the demon threw his arm around his shoulder, and Aziraphale took that as an invitation to snuggle up against him. He was looking forward for some light and warm movie full of motivating messages, happy endings, nothing to worry about.

Half an hour later, he wished they would have settled on the movie with the talking mouse.

“Why did they kill another deer, dear?”, he whisper-complained into the demon’s ear.

“What?”, the demon asked confused, before he realized. “Oh, that kind of ‘deer’. I was already wondering what the heaven a deer-deer was…”

“Wasn’t Bambi enough already?”, Aziraphale sputtered.

“They didn’t kill Bambi, though, just his mother.”

“As if that was any better.”

They sat for a while in silence and watched the Iron Giant on the tall movie screen. He was lying with the little boy with the weird name under the stars and listened to him talking about life and death and good and bad. Occasionally, one of them glanced over to the children, who were sitting surprisingly quiet and well behaved. Anathema sat deep in her seat, claiming both armrests; even though, she was no longer alone in the row. A family with a few children of their own sat next to her, but she did not let that discourage her from alternately throwing popcorn into the air to catch it with her mouth, and slurping from her soft drink.  
Even though, the movie had moved on, Aziraphale was still thinking about the deer; so, he whispered into Crowley’s ear:

“Are you thinking about our holiday in Switzerland, too?”

“Yes.”

“It was the first time you kissed me for another reason than etiquette.”

“Wha-er-I-mean-I-er”, Crowley spluttered and turned a dark shade of red. “How in the heaven do you mean that?” He did not take his arm from the angel’s shoulder, but only leaned away from him a little to give him a scandalized look. Aziraphale smiled at him and murmured:

“You know what I mean. There had been times that it was custom to kiss someone to greet them or pay them respect, and we did all that, but when we went on our winter holiday in Switzerland, you kissed me for the first time for no reason at all.”

Crowley cleared his throat.

“There wasss not no reassson. I ssstill had a reassson.”

“I know, darling”, Aziraphale reassured him. He put his head on the demon’s shoulder, holding his hand and rubbing circles on it with his thumb. “I do love you, too.”

 

-//-

 

Anathema was enjoying the movie; although, she slightly regretted not sitting with Adam and Billy. Going to see an animated movie with someone that could be confused for your little brother was one thing, being seen alone in a kid’s movie was another. Engrossed by the movie she moved her hand to her left to grab some more popcorn as her hand brushed against unfamiliar skin. Surprised, she pulled her hand back and met the wide-eyed stare of another girl. Anathema already wanted to apologize for reaching for the wrong popcorn, but then she noticed, it had not been the wrong popcorn.

“Are you stealing my popcorn?”, she hissed at the girl.

“Maybe I am. So what?”, the girl retorted. Anathema gaped at her. She must have been roughly the same age as her, with dark eyes and dark hair. She seemed to be wearing a denim jacket. More was not visible in the dark room.

“So what? What do you mean ‘so what’? You can’t just steal someone’s popcorn!”

“Shhh”, someone shushed them from the row behind. Angrily, Anathema turned around and shushed back. Then she returned to the other girl, who was AGAIN STEALING HER POPCORN. “Un-be-live-a-ble”, Anathema breathed.

“Really sorry”, the girl said. “Can’t afford my own popcorn, you know.” She pointed at the toddlers sitting next to her. “My little sisters been eating all the hair from my parents’ head; so, there’s nothing left for me. All the popcorn for them now. You an only child? Going alone into kids’ movies? Woah!”, she exclaimed as the Iron Giant suddenly slamjumped into a lake in the forest. They watched the movie for a few minutes, before a quieter scene came and Anathema answered:

“I may be an only child, but I am not alone here.” Grumpily she munched on another handful of popcorn.

“Really?”, the girl asked. “Who you with?” She started grinning. “Did they forget you and leave without you?”

Anathema glared at her.

“No, I am with those clowns”, she whispered back and pointed at the two families in the row in front of them. The girl stretched her neck to have a look at them.

“You have three dads and one mum?”

“They’re not my parents”, Anathema cackled. “I am giving the son of the two blokes on the left side math lessons and I did that today. After that, they had offered to bring me home on the way to the cinema, but forgot to let me out. So, they just invited me to go to the movies with them.”

The girl made an excited face, her eyes and mouth wide open, her head slightly nodding.

“That sounds awesome. I wish things like that would happen to poor little me.”

“Maybe you can tag along next time and I hand you over some of my weirdness”, Anathema murmured and threw another little look at the girl. The girl grinned back at her, stole some more popcorn and said:

“It’s a date.”


	39. Part 36: (Un)pleasant encounters

“Papa?”, Adam asked suddenly materializing next to Aziraphale, who was sitting in his armchair and reading. “What’s scourges?”

“Er”, Aziraphale stared at the pages of his book blankly. “It’s another word for plague. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing”, Adam replied suspiciously and disappeared again. Aziraphale lowered the book into his lap and stared into the room. Dim second-hand light, which had already lost all its warmth on walls of the higher buildings and rooftops, was falling in through the large windows; so, that it was just dark enough that you needed a lamp to read. It was a bit misty outside and the pedestrians walking by on the street were wearing coats in the fresh autumn weather.  
On the other side of the street there were standing two figures with regular faces, looking ordinary, so ordinary that they were disconcerting.  
It is the same seeing a grey shirt. A grey shirt is nothing special, maybe a little less frequently worn than white or black shirts, but still as common and normal as every other version of a plain shirt. But if you happen to walk around the corner of a street you walked many times before with dozens of people in it, just to realize that every single one of them is wearing the same grey shirt, you still do a double take. Then you stand there, blinking, waiting and feeling a bit like you are in a dream, until suddenly a few of the grey shirts leave the street, a few red shirts enter the street and a few shirts with nonsensical patterns on them, and you think “That was weird” and go on with your day.

Looking at the two figures on the other side of the sidewalk, just standing there, staring at the windows of the book shop, gives you the same sensation of out-of-placeness.

“Talking of the plague”, Aziraphale muttered and snapped the book shut. He stood up and marched to the entryway, determined to resolve this somewhere else than… well, as far away as possible. He just hoped, Adam and Crowley would not notice he was gone.  
The angel put his coat on, and closed the door behind him, before crossing the street and walking up to the two figures. They just stood there, the only movement their eyes following him.

“Er, good day”, Aziraphale greeted them. “Fellow… angels.” Unsure what to do next he extended his arm and asked: “Care to take a walk? It… looks less suspicious than us just standing here.”

The two figures looked at each other and nodded.

“That will do. Show the way”, one of them demanded and Aziraphale made a tiny relieved jump, before masking it up by starting to walk up the street. He defiantly did not look again at the shop, but instead kept his eyes straightforward. They strode until they were able to turn into a street with wider sidewalks making it able to walk next to each other, with one of the angels to Aziraphale’s left and one to his right.

“So, what brings you to earth?”, Aziraphale tried to break the ice.

“It’s not much time left until the apocalypse”, the angel to Aziraphale’s right said.

“Ah, yes. In two years already, right?”

“After all this time, finally the ineffable plan will take place and heaven can win against hell once and for all.”

“Yeah, yeah, exactly. Heaven against hell. Hell needs to be destroyed, so true”, Aziraphale agreed hastily. “But wouldn’t it be a bit sad to destroy earth also? I mean, when the main goal is the downfall of hell, oh pardon the pun, I guess they cannot really fall any more than they already have, but… do we really have to mix earth up in all of that?” He looked at the angel while nervously rubbing his hands. “I mean the big war between angels and demons could take place anywhere, couldn’t it?”

The angel looked at him as if Aziraphale was talking a completely different language, as if he was an impolite stranger drowning someone that does not speak their language in chitter chatter. Aziraphale almost waited for the other angel to answer with these little noncommittal nods that only meant they were not actually listening but it did not matter. But they were listening and the nod never came. So, the angel just stared at him with a very open and not at all connecting expression that forced Aziraphale to keep talking, while all the time feeling it was better if he would  
just  
shut  
the fuck  
up.

“We don’t need to destroy earth just because of the demons, right? Sounds actually like a very non angelic thing to do. Destroying… innocent bystanders.”

“But they aren’t innocent, are they?”, the angel asked. “Humans sin, and those who don’t will go to heaven. We have to follow the ineffable plan. They have to follow the ineffable plan.”

“…of course.”

“How is the feud against that demon going? The demon they sent to earth?”

“Oh, quite alright, everything alright, er, thwarting him and his evil plans all the time.” Aziraphale glanced from the angel on his right to the angel on his left side. The one on his left side still had not said a single word and Aziraphale was worried about that.

“I estimate, the demon knows about the whereabouts of the Antichrist?”

“I reckon he might”, Aziraphale gave in.

“You don’t know for sure?”

“Well, since I got an eye on the Antichrist, I am confident to say I would notice, if any demons would appear around him. The demon is instead off everywhere else doing evil deeds, and I pursue my deeds, which is thwarting his deeds. Taking up a lot of my time lately, I regret, it means I’ve done more cancelling out than doing good these days. Lots of… balancing.”

The angel on his left looked thoughtfully.

“I reckon keeping the balance until the day of the apocalypse is the best you can do.”

Aziraphale could not help but notice the “you” in that sentence. Immediately his thoughts jumped to the question of what all the other angels had done in all those centuries since the creation of the world, sitting up there in heaven, while he only popped in to report his good deed every now and then.  
While he was still thinking that thought, he already regretted it. Questioning the other angels and therefore the ineffable plan, and even God herself was never a good idea. It was an unhealthy habit he had developed during his time on earth and he needed to stop it.

“Always doing my best”, he replied giving a weak smile.

 

-//-

 

Aziraphale was still out, when Crowley wondered into the book store looking for attention.

“Angel?”, he called; eventhough, he could not see him anywhere. The sign of the book store was turned to “open”, which was highly unusual. Crowley guessed, Aziraphale had just forgotten about it and went to turn it to “closed”. Then he went to see what was going on in Adam’s room.

Adam had friends over. Crowley was not sure which ones, but he thought, he had seen them before. They were all up and about, carrying together every blanket and cushion and pillow they could find, putting them over the tiny table in the middle of the room, hanging them over the cupboards and chairs and pulling at the curtains of the window to close them. The room got darker and darker and then one of the children pulled out the glass bowl they usually used to make salad and put it upside down on the table. Crowley leaned against the doorframe and watched them with interest.  
Adam was towering books from Aziraphale’s collection on the floor again, looking into one that was lying on the top and copying a few lines unto another paper sheet. One of the children pulled one of those tiny fake candles that actually ran with a battery and a lightbulb out of nowhere and placed it under the salad bowl. A girl then pulled out one of the angel’s neckerchiefs and unfolded it carefully over the glowing bowl. Crowley started to get interested. He wanted to ask what was going on, but Adam seemed really engrossed in his work; so, he looked around between the other children.  
There was that little girl with the giant freckle in her face, a ginger ponytail and baggy dungarees. Crowley faintly remembered having seen her in combination with a tall ginger woman running behind her through Adam’s school building, and shouting. Yeah… she must be one of Adam’s classmates. There was another girl that looked like the twin of the first girl, but …taller, and with shorter hair. Then there were two actual twins, the two boys with the brown skin and horrifyingly enough: matching outfits.

“Ah”, Crowley said relieved as he saw Billy. “I know you.” He bent down and tapped the child on the shoulder. “What is going on… kid?”

“I’m a boy today”, Billy informed him. “and we are being fortune tellers today.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Me and Adam and Eric and Aaron and Alexandra and Emma. Adam’s found a book about the future; so, we gonna read it to find out about the end of the world.”

Crowley blinked.

“What?”

Before Billy could answer him, Crowley shoved past him and scrambled to get to his son, while hitting his knee on the highly cushioned table and stumbling to the floor.

Adam looked up, and noticed his father lying on the floor, one hand over the table and his face in a pillow on the floor. Emma carefully walked up to the table and took the salad bowl off it in case Crowley was not finished falling on things.

“Urrgh… what are you doing, Adam?”, Crowley groaned.

“What are you doing, Dada?”, Adam asked confused. “Did you fall asleep again?”

“Not this time.” Crowley propped himself up on his elbows and tried to get back up. “Billy told me you are doing some fortune telling? About the end of the world? What is this about?”

“Oh”, Adam exclaimed and reached for the book he had been reading and pulled it into his lap. “I’ve found this book in Papa’s library. Its from some guy named Nostradamus and he’s been telling lots of stuff about the future. Like here.” He turned the book around to read in it and put his finger on the page. “’Near the gates and within two cities there will be… scorge- scourges the like of which was never seen, famil- famine within plague, people put out by steal- steel, crying to the great imobi- immortal God of relief.’”, Adam read. “Now, I don’t believe in God,”

Crowley put his hands over his face.

“but the end of the world is science. So, Billy, Eric, Emma, Alexandra and Aaron and I are using magic to see into the future and find out when it is.”

Crowley dragged his hands down over his face and crossed his arms before his chest.

“Alright. Why do you want to find out when the end of the world is?”

“Because I have to know how long I have to do math homework.” Adam put the book back on the tower of other books. “I don’t want to spend the last day on earth doing homework, if there is no teacher there the next day anymore.”

“On the last day of the world we are going to party”, one of the twins remarked and the other children started cheering while still preparing the room for the fortune telling game.

“Sounds like a good plan”, Crowley replied. He remembered to breath again and decided to put all the worry about the real apocalypse aside to enjoy this fictional one. He reached out with his hand to ruffle through the boy’s hair. Adam immediately raised his hands to shove him away, protesting loudly.

“Hey, you’re messing up my hair!”

Crowley laughed.

“Alright. Have fun playing.” He got up from the floor. “Where did you get that idea from anyway? Another superhero movie?”

“Nah”, Adam replied caught up in the scribbling on his paper sheet. “Anathema told me that her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma or someone was a witch and wrote a book about the end of the world. She said her name was Nutter! Isn’t that a funny name? If I ever marry, I only marry someone named Nutter; so, I can have that name, too.”

 

-//-

 

“Sorry, I’m late”, Jasmin apologized as she slid into the empty chair in front of the small coffee shop with the tables on the sidewalk. “Why are we sitting outside? It’s freezing!”

“We are spying on that arguing couple on the other side of the street”, Anathema explained while getting up and awkwardly hugging her friend over the table. “Also, rude. I thought we could first introduce ourselves before you start complaining.”

Jasmin laughed and turned to the other girl sitting at the table. The brunette girl with the hazel eyes and nose like Barbra Streisand stretched out her hand to greet Jasmin. Jasmin took her hand and introduced herself.

“Hi, sorry for the rude entry, but Anathema’s being weird all the time and I got to know what’s going on”, she joked. “I am Jasmin and this is weird as well. We are usually never shaking hands. What’s going on.”

The other girl laughed.

“Glad you think so, too. I only know Anathema for a few weeks, but here weirdness is already growing on me.”

“I think this is really rude”, Anathema repeated, but the two other girls only laughed.

“And you are?”, Jasmin asked the brunette girl.

“Oh, sorry, Dora Williamina. You can call me Dora. Or Williamina. Whatever you like.”

“I am going to think about it”, Jasmin replied and sat back down. A waitress appeared and asked, if they already knew what they wanted to order. They told her they needed a bit more time and picked up the menus.

“So, how did you meet?”, Jasmin asked after she had decided what to eat. She put the menu down and looked over at Anathema and Dora Williamina. The two girls shared a look that ended one Anathema’s side with a long sigh and on Dora Williamina’s side with a giggle.

“We met at the cinema”, Anathema told her. She took a last look at her menu, then put it down and licked her lips. “Well, more accurately, I met her, when she was stealing my popcorn during the movie.”

Jasmin had to hide her mouth behind her hands for snorting out loud. The waitress returned and they interrupted their conversation to order.

“That’s fantastic. Go on!”, Jasmin requested and waved her hand at Anathema. “What happened next?”

“Well,”, Anathema began and shuffled in her seat. “as I said, she was stealing my popcorn and”

“Well, yes, I had to”; Dora Williamina interrupted her. She turned to Jasmin. “Look. I was sitting there, squeezed in between my little sisters and a damn cute girl, and all I wanted to do was ask her out, but it was in the middle of the movie and I didn’t know what to do!” She raised her hands in helplessness.

“So, you stole my popcorn”, Anathema deadpanned. Jasmin snorted again.

“Oh my god, this is gold”, Jasmin snickered. “I hope I get my coke soon. I need something to drink and snack for this story. But don’t wait on my behalf! Tell me more!”

Encouraged by Jasmin, Dora Williamina went on:

“Alright. So, I was sitting there. In the Cinema. In the dark. Watching some children’s movie with my parents and my little sisters, when they made me sit on the end of the line, because my sisters are scared, if they have to sit next to a stranger. So, they sat me next to the stranger.” She gesticulated over to Anathema. “First, I was thinking of asking her about the main actor in the movie, you know, to get the conversation started, but then I realised it was an animated movie.” She paused and raised her eyebrows at Anathema, who just rolled her eyes.  
“So, then I imagined how cute it would be for us to accidentally brush our hands against each other when reaching for the popcorn. I was really excited about that idea; so, I waited until she reached for the popcorn; so, I could reach for the popcorn, too! Only then I realised that it was her popcorn and it would make me look as if I was stealing the popcorn!” She held her hands out as if she herself was not able to grasp the fantasticality of that story. The waitress came and asked, who had ordered the coke.

While Jasmin started sipping on her drink, Dora Williamina continued:

“I wanted to change my mind, but it was already too late and she accused me of stealing!”

“Well, that was exactly what you did!”, Anathema threw in.

“Well, no-o! Not until then! But I could not just say it was a mistake! Accidentally stealing your popcorn was even more stupid than intentionally; so, I panicked!”, Dora Williamina exclaimed and almost knocked over her soda. Jasmin giggled. Anathema sighed and gave her a fond look.

“So, you kept stealing my popcorn”, she concluded.

“I had to!” Dora Williamina moved the soda away into safety and took her chair by the armrests to move it closer to Anathema. She put her arm around the shoulder of the girl with the dark underlined eyes and black undercut. “Otherwise, I would have never gotten my first girlfriend.”

“You are horrible”, Anathema decided, but still leaned into the embrace.

“Ew, you two are so soppy, it’s gross”, Jasmin decided and forked up her lava cake. “I think, I am going to call you Dodo, because dodos are fun.”


	40. Part 37: Fruitcake

The bell above the door chimed as the angel entered the book shop. He still felt a little… disintegrated. Seeing other angels always gave him the sensation of being out of place. He still remembered the way he had felt as a part of a big whole, like a piece of a puzzle. The angels were like that. Little sense for individuality, little appreciation for individuality. They rather felt like characterless multiplications of The One Angel, all following God, all guarding Eden, all doing whatever God would ask of them.  
There was not a lot of questioning or thinking going on in the old days. God could do all the thinking herself. No point in letting anybody else think, it would have only complicated things. Sometimes it is easier to do everything on your own.

Aziraphale closed the door behind him and walked into the kitchenette to look for something to drink. His eyes fell on the fruit basket on the table.

“Oh, yes, it had all began with that damned apple”, he thought, and searched for his favourite teacup. “Giving people ideas… those apples”, he murmured. “like pies… and other delicious…” He started brewing a tea to calm himself, but also looked for a leftover piece of cake. He suddenly felt rather hungry. He heard a noise from the door and turned to see a demon standing there.

“You’re back”, Crowley noticed.

“Is there any cake left?”

“Er…”, Crowley looked around, rubbing his eyebrow with his thumb and putting his hands into his pockets. “If you haven’t eaten it.”

Aziraphale pulled out a plate from the cupboard with nothing but crumbs on it. He showed it to the demon with a stern face. The demon raised his eyebrows, then shrugged.

“So, if neither you nor Adam have eaten it.”

“So, we have no cake?”

“I guess not”, Crowley conceded.

Aziraphale put the plate away, sighing. Crowley pulled his hands out of his pockets. “Hey, hey, angel, don’t take it too hard. There will be cake again”, he said in tone neither clearly mockingly nor comforting. “What has the world come to, no cake.” He wanted to hug the angel, but Aziraphale still glared at him.

“Do not mock me”, he told the demon with a pointing finger in his face. Crowley held his hands up, making a face as if saying “Alright, alright”, and Aziraphale went to his tea. “I am making myself a cuppa, and if you want to comfort me, I suggest you join me.”

“Is this a threat, angel?”

“It’s a blessing”, Aziraphale corrected over his shoulder, looking for sugar and milk. Only taking in the scent of the steaming hot water and herbs, calmed him down, and he breathed in relief. “Anyway, what were you doing, while I was gone? You did look after the kids, right?”

“Yeah, don’t worry. Oh, and I got to tell you, Adam is not only an atheist now, he also thinks the world is going to end soon.”

“What?”

“He predicted the apocalypse will be somewhen in October. I think, he set the date right before his fall holidays, which is good, because he thinks, the end of the world means that he has to do no more homework.”

“How convenient.”

“How are you so calm? I for sure wasn’t so calm, when I heard the Antichrist talking about the impending apocalypse.”

The angel shrugged.

“Must be the tea.” He let a sugar cube fall into the teacup of the demon. “Have one as well, then you’ll stop feeling spooked.”

“I never feel spooked”, Crowley protested with furrowed brows. The angel handed him the cup and they settled down around the table. “Why would I feel spooked? Because our adopted son is probably soon going to cause the apocalypse and still doesn’t know about it? Should I feel spooked that he thinks it’s a good idea to let the world end, because he doesn’t have to do any more homework then?” He stared into his cup. “Maybe we should just pull him out of school. Tell him, he doesn’t have to do any more homework. We teach him at home or something. Eternal vacation from school, doesn’t that sound like a world he would want to keep?”

“That’s just unrealistic, Crowley. We cannot supervise him every waking hour. We don’t get enough time doing our other jobs as it is. When was the last time you left London to do some evil deed?”

The demon mulled it over.

“Exactly”, the angel said. “We’ve been neglecting the rest of the world for years now, and we can’t even say that it’s because there’s so much work to do in London. The city is flourishing now that Adam’s powers grow stronger. He doesn’t want to live somewhere dirty, unsafe and boring. He wants to live somewhere nice, safe and exciting, which might seem like a bit of a paradox, but from a kid’s point of view it works. A place, where we let him go out alone with his friends, with his cat, where he can eat ice cream and play in the streets. There hasn’t been a single car crash in Soho for years! It’s actually quite unrealistic.”

“Quite.”

“What should we do, Crowley?” The angel looked pained. “I mean, are we on the right track? Should we just go on like this for the next two years”

“More like one and a half.”

“The next one and three quarters years and hope for the best?”

“What else is there?”

They both sighed and sank back in their chairs. They could hear the children playing in Adam’s room. Aziraphale stared ahead, not able to grasp a single thought, as Cat came into view. She entered the kitchen and walked around the table that only her long tail was visible for the angel. He followed her with his eyes, already forgetting what they were talking about. Suddenly, Crowley slammed his hand on the table. The angel jolted and looked over to him.

“What?”

“The book!”, Crowley exclaimed.

“What book?”

“I forgot to tell you. I meant to tell you, after you were gone, er, where did you go, by the way? Nevermind. As I said, you weren’t there; so, I was looking after the kids and found them playing fortune teller. They borrowed one of your books, you know, one from your collection of prophecies, the one from Nostradamus.”

“They borrowed my books again? They better not damaging it.”

Crowley waved him off.

“No, no, the book will be alright. What I meant to tell you is that Adam told me, he got the idea from Anathema, who has also a book with prophecies, one that she got from some ancestor of hers.”

Aziraphale furrowed his brows.

“Really? I think, I’d know if there was anyone writing books about prophecies named Device.”

“No, no, that’s the thing. Her ancestor’s name wasn’t Device, that must have happened later. Er, Adam has told me the name, I just, it was something really ridiculous. I mean, more ridiculous than Device even.” Crowley massaged his temples, then snipped his fingers. “That’s it. Her name was Maniac.”

Aziraphale squinted at the demon. Crowley seemed very excited about… something, and the angel had a hard time wrapping his head around it. There had been a lot going on recently. Being a parent was a lot to begin with, feeling like you do not belong anymore with the other angels was certainly something as well.  
Aziraphale felt like he should really be losing his job or something. He was not quite sure, if he meant his job as a book shop owner or if he called himself being an angel a job. The thought applied to both. He hadn’t sold a single book in months, and he hadn’t done the job he had been assigned to by God herself in years. His mind was still half in the conversation he had had with the angels from earlier. “Angels”, he almost scoffed. “What do they care about earth. They think the whole purpose of earth is it being the place you prove you belong to heaven. Damn, what am I thinking? Did I really just think about angels as if I wasn’t one of them? Why does this tea taste so bitter?” Caught up in pointless thoughts about his life, what maybe was not his life anymore and the question whether the tea tasted like normal tea, or whether was saltier, or maybe just he himself was a little salty right now.

There was the cat again. Sniffing at some crumb lying on the floor.

“No, that’s not it”, Crowley mumbled, going through is hair with his hands. “It was something about… a food. Fruitcake?”, he asked into his teacup.

Aziraphale took a sip of tea and tasted in on his tongue like some foreign substance. He reached for the sugar and milk.

“Something’s off with the tea today.”

“Yeah something’s NUTTER!”, Crowley yelled.

The angel looked at him in surprise.

“What are you talking about, dear?”, he asked a little worriedly.

“Anathema’s ancestor was a witch named Nutter, and she”

“AGNES NUTTER”, the angel exclaimed even before the demon could finish the sentence. He put the milk and sugar aside and stared at the demon wide eyed. “Agnes Nutter”, he repeated and then like he quoted it from an invisible sign behind the demon: “The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.” He stared at the angel. “I was never able to find a single copy of it. It was thought to be completely lost. Are you telling me, Adam’s tutor is the direct descendant of the witch, whose book I’ve been looking for ever since I first heard about it?”

“Amazing, right?”, Crowley called excitedly. 

“It’s just… unbelievable!”, Aziraphale decided and leaned back in his chair, stretching is arms out in front of him. He shook his head and then asked in a more serious tone: “You sure, you got that right, dear? You know, you tend to confuse names quite easily.”

“I know, I know, but I am sure this time. If not, you can just ask Adam. He told me about it.”

Aziraphale thought about it for a few seconds, smiling to himself.

“You know, it would be really great to get this book for my collection. If I could only get a look in it, that would already be like a dream come true.” He sighed happily. “At least something nice came out of this day.”

Crowley gave him a questioning look.

“Why? What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just… heaven checking up on me.”

“Oh no, you too?” Crowley put his hands over the angel’s. “Well, I guess we should have seen that coming. They must be just as excited for Armageddon to come up as hell. They did not notice anything wrong, right?”

“No, I don’t think so. They did not come into the shop, but only stayed on the other side of the street. So, I took them for a walk to talk to them. I don’t think they should be suspecting anything.”

“Well, that’s alright then.”

The doorbell chimed. Aziraphale turned his head to look at the clock on the wall.

“Must be the kids’ parents.”

 

-//-

 

Anathema raised her hand as the door was opened in front of her.

“Hey, I am here for the tutoring lesson.”

“Come in. I need to talk to you”, Aziraphale told her and ushered her inside. Anathema raised an eyebrow, then shrugged and walked past the angel. Aziraphale asked her to follow him into the kitchen and Anathema put her backpack down on the chair, dropping down on the one next to it.

“Fruitcake?”, Aziraphale asked.

“Huh?”, Anathema asked confused and turned to look at him. The angel opened the fridge and pulled out a plate with cake on it.

“It’s pineapple upside down cake.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks.”

She watched in awkward silence as the angel pulled out another plate, put a slice of cake on it with a knife and placed it in front of Anathema on the table, together with a fork and a napkin.

“Tea?”

Anathema looked at him suspiciously.

“Yeah? Thanks?”

Aziraphale flashed her a smile. Anathema only got more suspicious and forked up her cake, while eying the angel attentively. The angel made the tea, then offered the young woman a cup and put two cubes of sugar in his own. He sat down opposite of her. He smiled again. Anathema chewed on a piece of pineapple.

“So, Adam told me about a book you showed him.”

Anathema furrowed her brows.

“The book with all the solutions for the math exercises?”

“No, I mean a different book. A book about prophecies.”

Realization lit up Anathema’s face. She realized that this gave her away instantly, and carefully rearranged her features.

“What book about prophecies?”

“The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.”

Anathema took another bite of her cake.

“Nice pineapple upside down cake.”

“Thanks.”

Somewhere a door shut, footsteps approached and Adam stuck is head into the kitchenette. His eyes landed on Anathema.

“Oh, you are here already. I’m gonna go get my homework. Also, the world is going to end in a few weeks, tell you later more about it”, he said and disappeared again.

Anathema looked after him, then back at the angel. The angel stirred a spoon in his cup.

“What do you want that book for?”, Anathema asked.

“Oh, you know, nothing special. I think it’s just the curiosity of a bibliophile. I would just like to have a look at it to complete a lifelong dream of myself, even if I can never complete my private book collection.”  
Anathema considered it. Giving The Book away felt wrong. She had even felt bad after telling Adam about it, but it had just slipped out. Well, that was not exactly the right word. She had enabled it to slip through practicing talking about it for months, years even. Thinking about it like it was some big secret, like they had to hide the existence of The Book, because it would prove her family committing fraud and what not to get rich, as if it would prove they have been cheating all their lives. But why keep it now that it was useless anyway? It was just a book. A useless book like any other, that nobody should have some fit about and that should not hold the power to determinate what she had to do with her life.

She stared down at the cake and willed herself not to care. Willed herself to be free of having to be a professional descendant.

“Alright. I think you having a look at it wouldn’t hurt nobody.”


	41. Part 38: Zombies and Vampires

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all be happy I have nothing more important to do on my birthday than updating my fanfic.

After Anathema got home this afternoon, she found her mother in the kitchen. Apparently, she was trying out a new set of tarot cards. Anathema did not exactly know where The Book was kept these days; although, she sometimes saw it “wandering” around the house. Sometimes she saw her mother sleeping with it under her pillow, or it would lie in a chalk circle on the floor, candles all around, or sometimes she even found it in the trash, just to have her mother later apologizing to her ancestors and placing the book on the table in the living room like on an altar.

“Hey, mum, I’m back”, Anathema told her mother and went for the fridge.

“How was your day? There are leftovers in the fridge.”

Anathema found the plate with the curry, grabbed a spoon and let herself fall onto the chair opposite her mother. She placed the plate on the table and put a spoon full of cold curry into her mouth.

“Don’t you want to warm it up?”, her mother scolded her.

“Nah, it’s like pizza. You can eat it cold, too.”

Her mother sighed and kneaded her fingers, looking down on the cards splayed out on the table. Chewing Anathema turned one of the cards around to have a look at it, but the illustrations looked rather old and unappetizing.

“How was your day?”

“Good. I had tutoring lessons with Adam again.”

Her mother nodded.

“How is it going?”

“Alright. I think it’s not so good to have all the lessons so late all the time. The problem is I can’t earlier, because of my schedule, but Adam gets really cranky sometimes.” She frowned at her curry. “Today he tried to get out of working by making up imaginary numbers, and philosophical questions about what would change if we would put them in between the existing numbers. He got himself confused and ended up always having to count eleven numbers to get to ten, because he always accidently included his made-up number. Then he asked questions that are not really mathematical like, how far away is the moon, how deep is an ocean and such.”

“You have to be strict with him. The boy might think he can act as he pleases, because he has got all your attention, not like in class, where he has to share with twenty other kids. You cannot let him take you for a fool”, her mother advised her without looking up from her cards.

Anathema mouthed “ugh” into her curry, then told her mother that she would remember that.

“Well, as long as you are doing well with your studies”, her mother replied.

“I do”, Anathema groaned. Her mother looked up and put the tarot cards aside. He crossed her arms on the table.

“Do you? Don’t think I haven’t noticed you have been hanging out a lot with this new friend of yours. What happened to Jasmin? Did you fight?”

Anathema looked at her like she was going crazy. As if at least one of them was going crazy. She really did not want to fight with her mother again and she felt like her mother did not want to fight either, but these days it just happened. Anathema did alright, The Book did nothing, her father had not called in a while, and her mother only ever talked to people anymore she wanted to be polite to. She felt it was not the best idea to anger people before they told her about her future; so, instead she fought at home with her daughter, who did not believe in The Book anymore, nor wanted to be a professional descendant and instead wanted to study literature or physics or whatever Anathema would finally settle on.  
Getting angry Anathema replied:

“No, mum. I did not fight with Jasmin.” She scooped up a piece of potato with her spoon, stared at it, then put it down again. She looked at her mother. “Why would I? Why would you think that? Just because I am hanging out more with Dora now? Can’t I have two friends at the same time?”

Her mother smiled, and Anathema started shoving curry into her mouth.

“Sure, honey, you can have as many friends as you like. I am sure you are very popular.”

“Are you making fun of me?”, Anathema asked with a full mouth.

“Why would I, dearie?”

“Oh my god”, Anathema exclaimed and hurried to choke down the curry. “Do you have to talk to me as if I was still a baby?”

“Please don’t talk to me in this tone, Anathema”, her mother told her and picked the cards up again. She began covering the table with them, more or less ignoring Anathema. Anathema tipped her fingers on the table, looking around the kitchen, then getting up from the table. She collected her curry and backpack.

“Whatever”, she muttered and went to leave the kitchen. She turned around again in the doorway and called:  
“And just so you know, I actually do have only one friend. Jasmin’s my only friend, because Dora is actually my girlfriend. Happy forking Thursday. Good night.”

 

-//-

 

“Have you brought the fire- and shark-proof sleeping bag?”, Adam asked as Aziraphale opened the door for Billy and the boy came in almost drowning in his camping equipment. It was the day after Adam's tutoring lesson with Anathema and he had the afternoon free to play with his friends. Billy nodded and Adam nodded back like they were using a special code.

“It’s even zombie-proof”, Billy bragged.

“What is going on?”, Aziraphale asked. “You are not staying the night, are you? Tomorrow is a school day.”

“Not today, Papa, we are only preparing the bunker for Armageddon, when the world is ending in a few weeks. Then we have a sleep over. I asked Dada, if we were allowed.”

“I already asked my parents”, Billy chimed in. “You have to let us stay together until the end of the world!”

“Well, is the end of the world on a week day?”, Aziraphale asked.

“On a holiday”, Adam explained. Aziraphale contemplated that.

“Well, I guess, that’s alright then. Go have fun.”

With that Adam and Billy raced to Adam’s room. They had already started building a bunker, by shoving the cupboard a bit to the side, and turning his writing desk around, so that there was an empty space between the two objects in the corner of the room. Now they were filling this cramped space up with the sleeping bags. They tried to roof the space over with blankets. The space was not quite big enough for the children to actually stretch out, but they did not plan on sleeping anyway.

“Look”, Adam told Billy and waved him into the bunker to show him a shelf of his desk, that could be opened from both sides. In it were stashed away a bag of chips and something that looked like Adam’s birthday chocolates. “Our secret supply.”

“Dope.”

Billy pulled his backpack to him and opened it to reveal lots of pens in all different colours. He also brought lots of big paper and they unfolded it on the floor.

“We have to write some signs to let zombies know they are not allowed in our bunker”, Billy explained. “How about ‘Keep out if you are undead’?”

“You think it’s gonna be a zombie apocalypse? Nostradamus didn’t say anything about that in his prophecies.”

“We have to be prepared for everything”, Billy decided and began spelling out the warnings. He misjudged the needed place greatly and had to squeeze in the last letters. “Let’s add some skulls.”

 

-//-

 

Crowley was sleeping under Aziraphale’s bed as he was attacked by malicious evil. He yelled in surprise as a tiny furball sank its teeth and claws into his skin, and tried to flee. As he scrambled out from under the bed, the cat hooked her jaw into his trouser and let herself be dragged out after him.

“Bloody giraffe in a turtleneck”, Crowley blessed and propped himself up on both arms, sitting now on the floor next to the bed. He made an effort to entangle Cat from his trousers, but the cat had already let go of him in favour of curling up in his lap. “Oh no, no, no. Absolutely not.” He tried to shove the cat away, but she only hissed at him.

“Angel!”, Crowley called through the open door. “Help me! I am being attacked!”

Just at that moment the angel walked by with a basket full of laundry, calling over his shoulder:

“Could you take Cat for a walk? I think she doesn’t get enough fresh air.”

Crowley gaped after him, holding his hands up, and asking silently if someone was trying to make fun of him. He groaned, looked down at the furball in his lap that seemed to shed all its hair on his clothes as if the cat was trying to make him a fur coat all by herself.

“Alright”, he muttered and tried to get up while manoeuvring the cat into his arms. He carried her to the front door, searched for the leash on the clothes rack and put the kicking cat into it. Then he let her jump down and opened the front door to go for a walk. “I am out!”, he called back into the shop and closed the door behind him. He pondered about which direction he should go, when he found himself eye to eye with Susan.

“Er, hey, you again.”

Susan rolled her eyes.

“We are still neighbours, you know?”, the called and walked up to him.

“I also seem to recall you stalking us quite a bit.”

“I am a stay-at-home-mum, what do you suggest I do in my free time?”

Crowley wanted to suggest finding a job, but remembered in time that he himself had not worked for years either, so he kept his mouth shut about it. Instead he asked:

“What are you doing?”

Susan lifted her hand in which she held a green leash. The leash was attached to a heckling dog.

“Taking Connie for a walk.”

“Ha, me too”, Crowley said before he could stop himself.

“Nice, let’s walk together.”

 

-//-

 

“You know, sometimes people come visit me at my door like Jehovah’s Witnesses and try to threaten me for information about your little bookshop”, Susan nonchalantly told the demon while strolling together through the streets of Soho.

“Wot?” Crowley stared at her in confusion.

Susan gave him a side glance. They were accidentally wearing matching red coats in the fresh autumn weather, sky grey above them and a bit misty in the distance. Connie and Cat were peacefully walking alongside, stopping every few meters to sniff at something or to hiss and growl at some dog, old lady or pigeon.

“I think, it is because they want to have the property for themselves to turn it into some kind of retail outlet. They are usually wearing dark suits and are very polite, and ask questions about whether I ever had any complaints about my neighbours. I must say I am always rather disappointed when I hear the doorbell and it is only them. I much prefer girl-scouts with cookies or even the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is so fun to talk to them. Talking about Jehovah, did you know that Billy got the idea to be an atheist from Adam?”

“Hold on, what was that about the men in suits?”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t told them anything that could get you or Zira in trouble. I have actually been playing it up a bit on the good-neighbourhood story. Told them I am buying books in your shop now and then, that you were both lovely people with a lovely son and not suspicious at all. Once I even made up that you organized a little reading event for our children and their friends, where they could read short stories they made up to each other. You know, I think that would actually be a very nice idea. If you would talk to Zira about it, I could organize the”

“Suspicious? What do you mean ‘suspicious’?”, Crowley interrupted her. Susan was quiet for a few seconds.

“For a while I thought you were maybe part of some witness protection program”, she confessed finally. “Because I am actually a hundred percent sure you both made your names up, probably even right on the spot. And then the very wage story on how you got to have a son in the first place. It was rather fishy. So, I thought to myself, Susan, let’s keep an eye on them. If they try to sell their baby on the black market, you can still call the police. Mind you, you never did and you actually grew quite on me and also on Billy; so, I thought, maybe you got that baby somewhere illegal, because you weren’t allowed to have one as a same-sex couple, and I really did not want to break up a happy family.”

“You think we are under witness protection”, Crowley observed.

“Well, no, not anymore. I figured then you would have contact to any police station, secret service, CIA or something, whatever, so then I thought, maybe you were secret agents…”

“Secret agents.”

“I know, right?”, Susan laughed. “It sounds too ridiculous only saying it. You a secret agent!” She snorted. “You cannot even remember my husband’s name most of the time and we’ve been neighbours for almost nine years.”

Crowley tried to look hurt.

“It could be a disguise”, he mumbled and Susan laughed even more, nudging him in the shoulder. Crowley made a face.

“So, why haven’t you turned us in by telling these men in suits about us?”, he huffed. “Scared we could really be murderers or something, testifying against some mafia boss; so that we had to be put into witness protection?”

Susan laughed even more.

“Nah. My newest theory actually came to me after I watched the movie ‘Interview with the vampire’.” She gave Crowley a long challenging look. “Guess what my new theory is?”, she asked way to excited. She was nudging him in the shoulder again. Crowley only rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses and let his head bob mechanically whenever she prodded on him.  
As she did not get an answer from him, she exclaimed:

“Well, I am not gonna tell you! Even if you haven’t seen the movie, the title is a total tell-tale.”

“Look”, Crowley said and could not believe he had this discussion again. Only like a century ago he had to answer the exact same questions from people reading “Dracula” for the first time. “I know what it looks like, but I am indeed not a werewolf.”

Susan burst out laughing.

“Oh my god, you can be so funny. But now that you mention it, your eyes do have something animalistic.”

“It’s only a trick of the light”, Crowley assured her. A man with a Yorkshire Terrier was passing by and while Connie was shying away from it yapping, Cat was trying to slap him with her paw. Crowley shooed her, but made no real effort in tugging her away from the poor dog.

“So, anyway, what’s the deal with you two?”, Susan asked after they had passed the man and his terrier. “Are your names really Anthony and Anthony? Don’t worry, I would never tell on you! You two are like my best friends, even if I sometimes call Zira my arch enemy! That’s just competitive parent talk! So, tell me! And don’t think I haven’t heard how you told our kids the J. of your second name stands for Janthony.”

Crowley exhaled loudly.

“No”, he confessed. “My name is not Anthony Janthony Crowley.”


End file.
